Islam, Psychedelics
and ‘Altered States’
An explanation of how the Islamic framework provides guidelines for the use of naturally occurring psychedelics by revisiting core principles of Qur’an and Sunnah to find parameters for use, boundaries for misuse, while also considering the resulting ‘altered states’ place in Allah’s creation of human souls, free will, jinn and shirk.
A funeral procession passed by Allah's Messenger ﷺ who said, "Relieved or relieving?" The people asked, "O Allah's Messenger ﷺ what is relieved and relieving?"
He said, "A believer is relieved (by death) from the troubles and hardships of the world and leaves for the Mercy of Allah, while (the death of) a wicked person relieves the people, the land, the trees and the animals from him."
For everyone waiting for ‘relief’
1 - The Qur’an as the Basis for Reality 12
2 - Muhammad ﷺ as The Walking Qur’an 17
4 - The Nature of Freewill and its Execution 30
6 - Other ‘Scriptural’ and Historical Practices 41
7 - Psychedelic Use and Religious Cross-over 46
9 - The Settling of the Senses for a Life on Earth 52
10 - The Strongest and Quickest Psychedelic 57
12 - Effects of Psychedelics on the Visual Cortex 65
13 - A Bridge Between Psychedelics and Religion. 67
Appendix 1: Brief Outline of Islamic Chronology 84
Appendix 2: Explaining How Other Scriptures Were Once ‘Qur’ans’ 91
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ
The following explores the intersection of Islam with naturally occurring psychedelics. The aim is not to encourage psychedelic use but to acknowledge the growing body of scientific research identifying therapeutic and spiritual benefits in psychedelic substances, and also to highlight the spiritual dangers that may arise when psychedelics are used by those operating outside an Islamic framework, most notably in the form of shirk[1], ‘ascribing divine power to other than God’ or ‘polytheism’. LSD and other chemically derived sources are of no interest and not discussed here as they are manufactured.
Further, the paper hopes to bring the scientific research on the benefits of psychedelics to the attention of Muslim scholars (ulema), asking them for a thorough examination and possible integration of naturally occurring psychedelics as acceptable forms of healing. A nuanced engagement with the growing discourse on therapeutic psychedelics will allow them to better communicate with their various congregations, strengthening, in turn, the ability of parents to better converse on this topic with their children, whose interest in psychedelics continues to grow on social media.
My interest in this topic comes, primarily, from my lifelong passion as an educator helping young people learn, first as a teacher, then headteacher who took a school that was near closure to ‘Outstanding’ status within two years. More recently I developed teams and technologies to provide exam-passing and teacher training materials used by over 1 and a half million people worldwide. I like helping people do things that benefit them. People, consciously so or otherwise, are always operating within frameworks and Islam’s ‘completeness’ and universalism allows it to generously absorb into itself other frameworks, even the culture of therapeutic psychedelics.
To rephrase the above more accurately, I’d invite people to think of Islam in a fuller sense than people have previously allowed: Islam is not one set of rules vying for your attention vs. some other set of rules belonging to another religion, like some football team rivalry. Islam, meaning surrender, is the universal goal of every living thing in all existence.
The perfection of this is through the Qur’an and its divinely preserved status, and then through the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ who embodies all archetypal representations of earlier prophets: the wisdom of Solomon, the asceticism of Jesus, the warriorhood of David, and, one might cautiously include the introspection of Buddha, whose prophetic status was speculated by later Muslim theologians.[2] Though the final point is not my personal viewpoint, I understand why such a position would have benefited people in various parts of the Asian subcontinent for whom such a parallel may have been of use in terms of dawa (inviting people to Islam) or integration and thus mention it as part of ‘possibility’ and Allah does as He wills and He knows best.
I have outlined Islamic chronology of why we exist and the timeline and stages of that development from the soul realm to the earthly realm in the appendix. It’s a good place to start if the notion of being a soul descended to earth as an execution of free choice is new or you wish it to be revisited.
As someone who has had the pleasure of spending six years making a exegesis-based poetical and contextual rendition of the Qur'an[3] allowing young people to read it in English in an engaging but also educational way, the Final Revelation is central to my life and being. Without the firm foundation of the Qur’an I’d never have dared to enter a domain as ambiguous and unexpected as psychedelics. Yet, here we are.
I also feel able to contribute as someone who has tried four different types of psychedelics over 60 times. I know when I use which for what ends and will discuss where appropriate throughout the work. By the testimony of the many I have helped, cautious use of psychedelics in controlled settings has helped them to ease their troubles and given them a ‘jolt’ of reinvigoration and higher, or original soul-focussed, meaning to their lives.
Some may wonder as to why I’d experiment on myself and others, but in my own case, this is to do with insight, not health, and for those who have used it to successfully give up drinking, ease depression, or quit smoking, I’d argue that these ‘plant medicines’ have been successful, where conventional programs and antidepressants have not. After all, I don’t have shares in any big-pharma companies, so I have no dog in this fight. Also, with recent news of US Muslim attempted suicide incidences and Muslims considering suicide being higher than other religions, I look for all remedies possible to alleviate such a situation[4]
Most important, though, is my position as a parent and member of the human race. Anything I feel that might help protect me in raising my children, I would want others to have access to without having to go through some of the trials and tribulations I went through along the way. This is not, of course, to encourage partaking in naturally occurring psychedelics but at least to understand its therapeutic value within the context of the Muslim experience.
After reading countless accounts of experiences from those outside the Muslim tradition, accounts which, however authentic to the person involved, required a great deal of conjecture and logical jumps for the reader to make sense of. With that in mind, I have come to believe that Islamic cosmology and theology hold the most powerful and coherent modality for explaining psychedelic experiences. Firstly, because Islam helps make coherent sense of these experiences but, more importantly, because only Islam profiles the guardrails necessary to avoid misuse of psychedelics, even whilst permitting an exploration of its benefits. It does this in the same way it incorporates elements of other ‘religions’ or ‘scripture’ elements and traditions, that MAY at one time have been the form of Islam of their time, before corruption, but that isn’t our focus here.
If my reader is a member of another faith, do not worry. You will, doubtless, find parallels here in your own belief system. Take it, change it, adapt it with appropriate references - you are welcome to benefit your community with what is here. In this respect, I'm reminded of the prophetic instruction to ‘love for your brother what you love for yourself’[5] and the Qur'anic command to ‘speak of the good of your Lord’[6]. The first means to assist others in improving their character and confidence as a dignified creation of the Lord; the second alludes to the framework of surrendering and the search for peace and dignity within that, through research, reflection and understanding of whatever we experience in our individual worlds.
Because this is an endeavour of personal interest, I’ll write to you as if we were sitting down talking over a coffee and try to remove jargon unless it's absolutely necessary. All that follows is completely predicated on the idea (which may be a strange concept for most) that the Qur'an is the basis for reality and existence in reality, and that you, Muslim or not, are a soul on a journey returning to your Lord[7] having come from your Lord.[8]
If you are Muslim, it might provide you with a reminder; if you are not Muslim, you may find here a very different or fuller framework and paradigm for understanding your entire existence. It’s never pushed; I have no interest in what you choose to do with your free will. I simply provide a framework of the probing, guiding and aforementioned guardrails, and if there's a benefit in doing so, then praise be to God. There is a fuller explanation in the appendix, but it is not the core focus of this piece of work.
I'll try to keep personal experiences to a minimum and focus on taking you through the reality that the Creator (God) allows parts of His creation (psychedelics) to be used by any part of humanity for certain effects and (more specifically, from the way they have altered senses and brain processing to give moments of ‘tripping’, ‘insight’ or ‘awareness’) the effect on the visual cortex of humans.
At times, this monograph will seem to have a split personality where it will gently extol psychedelics as the better of two evils against things such as antidepressants, while also warning that it is a gateway for one of the worst, most intense forms of shirk. That the two notions can exist side by side isn't really that surprising. As with most things, it's the difference between use and utilisation: DVD players are meant to be used for watching the DVD but may be utilised for smashing someone’s head in.
In the aforementioned examples, and as with all else, the intention is everything. I intend this to help brothers and sisters in humanity whatever their background, interest or starting point, and anyone interested in a convergence of Islamic belief and psychedelics.
It must be noted, as an apt disclaimer, that I had interacted with things that do not belong to this material world for 15 years before I ever touched any psychedelic substance. For whatever reason, God made this known to me, and thus, for me, I view psychedelic use no differently than visiting an exotic and foreign culture or observing nature at length. Same as a colour-blind person gets used to a reality without certain colours, I see things I know others don’t.
In its essence, psychedelic use is an internal search. The only difference I have found in psychedelic-internal-search compared with ritual prayer, dhikr[9], Vipassana meditation, astral projection, and Reiki - all of which I have practised for years - is the speed and intensity of the journey.
But underlying them all for me, is the Qur’an. I am a Qur’an absolutist, meaning I believe everything in the Qur'an is true[10] and a refracting archetype that remains so until the day the Lord decides to stop manifesting this form of existence. If I haven't lost you already, welcome to a different way of looking at everything.
Though the idea of pros and cons will permeate this work at different times, I will say if anyone is on the verge of any extreme action - be it joining a terrorist group; wanting to kill; taking one's own life or to transgender - and you’ve sought all clinical and psychological routes to remedy (including just staying off the internet) and they haven’t worked, then find a clinical, legal setting in which to take a psychedelic. At the very least it will help you realise that all the afflictions and anger you have are only ‘sensory true’. And you can change your sensory truth and find a different way to feel purpose or to feel safe.
To save any misunderstanding, the focus is to find benefit and permissibility from those in our tradition who can give permission, in the same way, and from the same thought process, that the use of alcohol-based medicines was given permission. Certain instances, certain parameters and most importantly, certain permissions are needed.There is nothing to be found in psychedelics that is not found in other spiritual practice.
If permission is granted know it is a tool, not a short cut, If I were to come to you and say I will produce your baby in 3 weeks, rather than 9 months, you could imagine your horror. Shortcuts, by definition take away the journey and far more often than not, the journey was the purpose. Hastiness and regret go hand in hand.
Warmest well wishes wherever you are in your journey.
The ‘avatar’ masquerading as Leon Hady.
Reminder
“You remind me of something…” I said,
Should’ve whispered it,
Saved myself from your: “Of what?”
I’m slow to answer.
How do I explain that I nearly stopped trying,
For those who didn’t share what I loved?
Was about to cocoon myself in mosques and books
With others who do the same,
With self-satisfied smiles.
As Exalted is He said: “You can’t guide those you love,”
And I’d learned that first hand.
So often burned and spurned – why try again?
Then you and yours reminded me;
For all our ‘isms, religions, and differing decisions,
We’re all doing the same thing:
What works,
For us,
For now.
“You remind me of something…” I said
And then whispered to myself, after your: “Of what?”
“We’re both just trying to make sense of the world
Because after all,
You…
Just want…
To feel safe…
Too.”
Abdul Hady, Medina, 2006
The sequence in which I explain where psychedelics fit in an Islamic framework will, at times, tend to reveal more about Islam than the psychedelics. This isn’t a surprise as Islam is a continuation of prophetic revelation from Adam, while naturally occurring psychedelics is a niche within a niche: ancient cultural holistic medicines, co-opted into modernity as subsets of healing and spirituality, but an obvious part of God’s creation and more importantly something people have used to connect and understand the divine.
With this in mind, they fall into a very narrow niche in Islam, likely bordering on medicinal and reflective use in extremely low doses. But since people will be using them at higher doses and screwing/recalibrating with the default limit of their senses, and using these experiences to construct realities to believe in God; but also in entities other than God as The Creator, The Healer or The Guide to name but a few, we have to understand and explain what is happening from an Islamic point of view, because as Allah says ‘We have left nothing out of this book’ [6:38] therefore an explanation and resetting of people’s relationship with naturally occurring psychedelics can be found in Islam.
To do this, we will open Chapter 1 by explaining the Qur’an as the cause of existence as we experience it, and then the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ importance as the vessel for understanding everything in life in Chapter 2. In essence a framework for how Muslims think, deduce and include in their realms of possibility.
Once this framework is set, we go into the notion of the soul through Chapter 3, an inevitable subject, given the tendency of psychedelic use, both ancient and modern, to gain a deeper insight into the self.
Since the soul isn’t just an accident of creation, but the designated vehicle for the specific execution of free will, we will also have to explain its proper place in Muslim cosmology in Chapter 4, and then, as generously and delicately as one can explore such area, explain links to other religious traditions in Chapter 5.
Next, we look at where specific elements of human history and psychedelic use overlap through time and align to desire, that phenomenon which creates so much good and bad for ourselves and others.
This takes us to the origins of desire in the spiritual life in Chapter 7, and how those desires and understanding of the world around us are manifested. We then take a look at how we can ‘mess’ or influence those senses in Chapter 8 with DMT at one end of the spectrum and psilocybin microdosing at the other end, in Chapters 9 and 10.
This moves smoothly away, in Chapter 11, from general effects into the effects on the visual cortex, where much of our sight is processed. We also discuss and reflect on the danger of the visual cortex's manipulations from our normally limited senses and discuss realms of the unseen and the dangers that lie there for sons of Adam, from an Islamic viewpoint, but applicable to all of creation.
Next, we move into detail regarding the spirit realm and specifically that of Jinn who are even more abundant than humans and live on earth as we do, exercising influence over us, especially in the way certain healing centres acquiesce to them and ask for power and healing from them, resulting in shirk, which is covered in detail in Chapter 14.
Lastly, I bring in some moral reminders. Whilst I am fully aware that this work will probably fall on deaf ears, regardless of how many suicides and suicide attempts and how many are lost to shirk simply because we can’t be bothered to research and explain a newly minted phenomenon, I am also aware that the value of any endeavour is: intention, intention, intention! And with Allah is every access.
The appendix then allows for extrapolation of how a soul comes to be on earth from an Islamic viewpoint and explains how other scriptures were once "Qur’ans", meaning "readings" and "revelations" from God, filling in gaps in people’s knowledge which is likely needed for first timers to Islam, but would have taken us even further from the core focus here which is the alignment of Islam and psychedelics rather than reams and reams of our theology and cosmology.
The Qur’an that Muslims view as their holy scripture doesn't just form the basis of their day-to-day practice. On one level it is also the reason the universe exists. God says ‘Be!’ and everything all of us has ever seen or known and still yet to be known is created [Qur’an 36:82] and given perfect form, measure and balance [Qur’an 54:49]. These words in it aren't just a language used by moving the tongue, mouth, and using the vocal cords. They are the words of God, pre-eternal, and with those words, creation is manifested and sustained. We get to repeat and remind ourselves of them in mushafs we hold but must note that some words in it originated creation, some words sustain creation, and others elucidate it.
The Qur’an references God’s names [Qur’an 7:180]. The final number is said by some to be 3,000 in total, some kept for other realms, some descended to humanities previous scripture, a smaller number in the Qur’an and most commonly known 99, but what’s important is that the names known give balance and weight to all the created items in the universe.[11] These created items include those that are testable with senses and extensions of senses (let’s call them tools or instruments) and ones that are not testable with senses/instruments such as spirits and angels.
To illustrate, consider known things to be car engines, and unknown things searched with sensory tools to be dark matter or intangible abstract things we all think we know like ‘love’ or intangible items we know little of such as ‘consciousness’. But knowing they exist or how they work, or feeling them are all extremely different.
In a simple understanding, we can take the word Al-Rahman, which means Source of Endless Mercy, and consider every merciful or kind thing that we can sense or perceive in our qualia as imbued with that trait [Qur’an 7:156]. Furthermore, we can also see that every bodily movement or phenomenon we can witness allows us to appreciate that perceived mercy, as a vessel for that merciful act. It is thus, in and of itself, an actor for mercy’s manifestation.
If I experience you letting go of a debt I owe you, as ‘a mercy’, then I could:
We could repeat this again and again with other examples, but it should suffice for the reader to research and observe the Divine names and look to apply them to everything that they witness and sense. One could pursue this as far as they had patience for. But for the purposes of our senses perceiving and starting to understand that, The Qur’an, spoken by God, as a vehicle for creation, that starts it all, when He says ‘Be’.
It is important to note here that the Islamic Qur'an has a final, but not exclusive, say with this way of thinking. The Qur'an is the final and only uncorrupted [Qur’an 15:9] message from The Creator of all the universes (through the last Prophet [Qur’an 33:40]). Please note wehn we discuss the Qur’an we are talking about the speech of Allah at the point He says and repeats it. You may see a Mushaf or Mushafs (book containing human heard pronouncings of the Qur’an as par tof its preservation) and confuse it with the Qur’an (actually words of Allah said) but they are not the same. We refer always to the spoken word when we speak of the Qur’an.
What's left in other traditions and scriptures of other faiths can also be drawn upon in those areas where there attempts at preservations do not explicitly conflict with the Qur'an preserved in mushafs. Many traditions have names of God and power of God’s names noted, this is no surprise as the Qur'an tells us every generation and group had its Message, Messengers and Prophets [Qur’an 16:36].
God’s words are not borne out of human language. Quite the contrary. Languages are created forms through which God's messages are borne! They are the vehicle through which mercy is delivered to us [Qur’an 12:2].
Language exists only, or at least primarily, as a vehicle for divine communication. Often though, we just use language to lie, both to ourselves and others.
Since we know that the final Arabic Qur'an (noting, of course, that non-Arabic ‘readings / recitations’ would have been the basis of other scripture from Allah, that would have been ‘Qur’ans’, so to speak, of their time in their language - see appendix 2 for further discussion) in its current auditory form existed before there were human ears to hear it, its very existence then invites us to consider a space outside of our current ideas of the material world and time and space, as viewed by science and collectively agreed upon, in order for us to work and use our physical bodies in this world.
So, the Qur'an itself, we know from what it tells us, comes from a non-material state and it alludes to and creates a stage for endless other ‘state’ possibilities: whether it's the shared notion of dreaming and visions [Qur’an 12:4-5] and what we see, hear and taste in our dreams; whether it's pre-life and afterlife notions such as heaven and hell and the garden; or whether it's dealing with entities such as spirits, devils and angels. These are all states and actors and realities because the Qur’an calls them so [Qur’an 67:3-4], creating a wide, varied and rich world within our immediate sensory experience and, for the initiated, one beyond the average sensory experience.[12]
Correspondingly, much like any important lesson, it only has to happen once for it to have a great impact on us, and as much as we use models, theories, and the past as ways of understanding to make future choices and actions be they in love, life, business or sport, the Qur'an gives us the playing field with which we can view the actors and stages upon which all our interactions in life are based.
The prime modes through which this is done is the understanding bestowed on the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and thus giving huge importance to what he said as he becomes the ‘Living Qur'an’.[13] Thus we must get a sense of his place as the master-teacher in order to unpack the lessons from the final revelation, the last in a long line of master teachers who did the same.
The relevance to psychedelic use comes from the fact that in order to delve into the altered states, one must use our brain serviced by our blood which is part of creation and the psychedelic, which is itself another part of creation. Both of these, I argue, are first form creations: without human intervention to change the essence of what both things are.
Thus, through the Qur'an and the Prophet ﷺ an understanding of altered states can be found. The Qur'an relates he was assisted by Angels, the Qur'an relates he travelled to other realms, the Qur'an relates he spoke to creatures of a celestial nature, the Qur'an relates that he and others will be brought back to life after seeming death, and the Qur'an relates that we were all souls in a pre-eternal life.
While saying the Qur’an is the basis for all we know, it also becomes the basis for all our limits as well. It might surprise the reader to learn that the Qur’an tells us ‘there were generations more powerful than you’, [Qur’an 28:78] referring to all those who would come after, and that there are things ‘I created that you know, and things I created that you do not know.’ [Qur’an 16:8] So it is imperative we approach all things, including for our focus on the induced altered states and levels of intoxication and permissibility, knowing we will only know as much as we can know. Hence using it for guardrails and limits.
The Qur'an creates this reality that we exist in and tells us of so many different times and states that our souls will also exist in. Indeed, its very first lines were delivered by an angel, in its primordial angelic form, to the Prophet Muhammad, who thus become to source of all Qur’an to follow from a human and jinn perspective.
Following on, certain individuals in history are imbued with utter understanding and reflective ability of God's communion with humanity. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ , whom Muslims regard as the final Messenger, is the last of the perfect beings to have this Grace bestowed on him. As such, he is the most documented pre-internet character on the face of the Earth.
The collections of what he said and did, and how he applied and lived the Qur'an, are an eternal example. Some would obviously argue that his example is incompatible with modern notions of living, even when those notions are concerned with self-expression and self-preservation, not upholding the sacred covenant of faith in God (to be discussed later) or moulding our character towards sanctity.
As soon as “communion with God” and “understanding our place in the cosmos” takes a back seat to our fear of death and trying to prove ourselves, the Prophet ﷺ no longer carries the importance of being a bridge to the Divine and becomes merely the son of Amina and Abdullah, his biological parents.
But for his followers, his name means ‘most praised’, and when we think of the large number of Muslims; the large number of people called Muhammad; and the incalculable number of times his name is said in reverence we see the fulfilment of his name.
God, in His Wisdom, knew that his final and most beloved Prophet ﷺ would live in a time when the technology of paper and pen would allow for him to be thoroughly documented, and thus a lighthouse for so many and a lightning rod for others who would wish to set themselves apart from a deep and meaningful relationship with the Divine by maligning him. God says of the Qur'an: {Through it He misguides many, and through it He guides many others} [Qur’an 2:26] and as a living embodiment of the truths and virtues in the Qur’an, the same may be said of the Prophet. Thus he ﷺ is the Walking Qur’an.
His central importance to us is as the conveyor of the Qur'an and as the peak embodiment of character, and flowing from that his setup and structure of family life and society through which we see the Qur'anic influence in every walk of life. [14]
As with any figure, what we know of them shapes how we view them and learn from them, and thus looking at the 1 million plus accounts of his sayings and deeds gives us an understanding of how our interactions with various types of matter, light, sound and material embodiments in the form of animals or people can proceed.
All that follows in the various chapters are aligned to the Qur'an and the man ﷺ through whom the Qur'an was given to us. It must be said, though, that because so many other different religions and ideas are mentioned within the Qur'an, he ﷺ becomes a gateway to understanding all things, at all times as well as understanding their nuances, as he ﷺ explained, and interacted with so many other cultures and traditions.
Most notably we will draw upon ideas that reference other prophets such as Jesus, Moses and Abraham; characters that carry the archetype of erroneous choices such as the devil and his companions throughout time; as well as an understanding of other material and celestial beings and the life and purpose of plants .
For those interested more acutely though, there are also intimations around simple things such as the storing of food. The Qur’an conveys to us lessons given to the Ancient Hebrews (the Children of Israel) where they are told at a point not to store food [Qur’an 2:57] and Jesus is also given the responsibility of telling his followers what type of things can be stored [Qur’an 3:49], and this gives us a sense of questioning what negative could come to us from the storing of food or what must be done to food in order to store it. This could then lead us down the idea of preservatives and additives and ultra processed chemically manipulated food, whose negative effects hardly need explaining. As an aside, when you start to view messages in the Qur'an with such detail, you can see how far and deep one line of the Qur'an can reverberate through your understanding of everything and anything. Each line of the Qur’an in aural form is a ‘sign’ i.e miracle , and for those who know, the Qur’an beheld, as a text[15] is not a book of words; it’s a book of worlds!
What is most interesting, which might surprise many, is the number of prophetic statements that seem to affirm other cultures or generations’ practices. For example, when heading to visit spirits, the Prophet ﷺ took one of his companions with him and drew a protective circle or ring[16] around him to ward off the influence of the spirits, a custom widely used in new age movements.
Another interesting parallel would be where the Prophet ﷺ would move his hands above or around one of his companions or their items in order to bring about healing and memory improvement[17] and protection such as we see with Reiki.
A more direct example would be the amount of time he spent in seclusion, though not permanently as a monk, but many days and weeks of individual retreat which, one could say, parallels popular customs in Buddhism. You are unlikely to find many Muslims today who think of the amount of time that the Prophet ﷺ spent in seclusion,[18] but it is likely one of the most character-forming traits in him. Fewer, still, would relate it to the practice found in monasteries even though the parallels are obvious. Buddha is famed for his long periods of still cross-legged introspection, and adhering monks the world over, whatever the denomination, take stillness, solitude and silence as golden rules.
Another example could be seen in the adherence of laws from other cultures and traditions such as the act of stoning detailed as punishment for certain crimes in the Torah. He commanded Jews of his time to uphold this when they asked him.
From this, we see that the Prophet ﷺ does not only embody things that are fully fleshed out within the Islamic tradition, but he also gives credence to the actions of generations that came before him, because all of them are about the material interaction between us and the universe around us and at some point, and the most explicit of these were his ﷺ upholding some of the laws of earlier prophetic revelations which he judge to be still valid.
For the above, it suffices that we highlight several popular traditions that span the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths and the most up-to-date modern new-age approaches to healing. But far from isolated incidents, the writer believes that it is important to look at the other traditions and see what mentality and approach brought people to them and what they may have had from sacred knowledge or sacred insight in order to create movements, ideas and practices that have stood the test of time in benefitting people.
Of most interest and alignment, here, would be instances where the Prophet ﷺ explains things he heard, saw or felt that are akin to a person being in an altered state, which one could also find themselves in when experienced in the realm of psychedelics. To be clear, this is not to suggest any kind of identicality with his states or rank ﷺ, but to approximate us towards those states as an inward Sunna (imitation of him ﷺ).
As mentioned in the introduction, I am fully aware of and have experienced these altered states through a variety of ways. So again this is not to say that the altered state of the Prophet ﷺ is reachable through psychedelics. The aim in using psychedelics is not to emulate some sort of prophetic vision or Qur'anic instance, but merely to help people see that the state they are currently in is temporary and can be changed rapidly through psychedelics to bring about some benefit as a tool at a certain point of life, the maladies of which are too numerous to mention in both cause and effect, but feel free to pick any one of: materialism, alcohol abuse, family breakdown, not enough time in nature, screens, etc. etc. etc.
We must also note that the experience of the Prophet ﷺ and the viewpoint of others who saw him is key to seeing how these occurrences were not spaces he dwelled in other than when he needed to or was called to[19],[20],[21]. To put it more plainly, this was part of his reality, not an attempt to escape it, which is why some turn to psychedelics.
To give a few examples of: there was an instance where the Prophet ﷺ was in prayer, knowing that everyone behind him would emulate him, to be close to the Qur'an and fulfill the Qur'anic perfection of what humans can do in prayer. In that prayer, he suddenly changed the normal expected movement by reaching out his hand out perpendicular to his body and looked like he was squeezing something with his arm outstretched. Those following him asked him if they should do the same and he replied ‘No. I was reaching out to grab hold of a devil’. He was living in two realities.[22] 99.99999% of us live mainly in one, and we should be grateful for that.
Another, and possibly the most famous instance, would be his ascension on the Night Journey where he went to other realms and met other Prophets who are supposedly deceased,[23] travelled great distances and seemed to have been gone for what would have taken many days or weeks of exploration if done in the bodily form, in the time that it took a door to close. The time displacement here is a key factor of appropriating or matching the altered state of psychedelics with the altered state that this Prophet ﷺ and other Prophets spoke of.
One of the little-considered side plots to this event is how people reacted to what he said. Some people believed he had been to and seen all he recounted; others did not believe and in that moment decided to leave Islam and stop following him permanently; others had grave doubts and thought about leaving Islam. However, the doubters were quickly reassured: on his return from Jerusalem, he recalled seeing a travelling caravan, and described it in detail and its time of arrival. When this occurred, just as he described it, it strengthened the faith. Thus, we see just one instance of how what he did, said and saw (or more accurately what God used him for) brought about belief, disbelief and a range of states in between among people. His altered states altered people’s faith levels.
There is discussion and debate as to whether he went with his full body, in an astral self, in a soulic self. The ‘how’, in this instance, is less important than the ‘what’ - which is that he did travel as confirmed in the Qur’an. Indeed, the common underlying reasoning with items beyond human intellect or information available, is: we affirm the truth of it, as the Qur’an states it and the ‘how’ is known only to Allah. Further, we must see the brain as not the only form of processing of information, for insight and understanding as The Qur’an tells us ‘they have hearts that do not understand.’ The heart knows too, has it’s own ‘brain’,[24] but we refer mainly to the spiritual heart.
There are two things to note here, if the notion of the Prophet ﷺ as a ‘Mercy to all the worlds’ is new to the reader, every act, done by him or promoted by him ﷺ, is to be seen as an act of mercy. Moreover, his way is found in the abundance of his sayings. If a saying or tradition alludes in one or two instances to something we can link loosely to something of ‘altered states and by extension psychedelics, it must be taken with the relative percentage given to as one or two hadith in a million. I.e. extremely fringe.
Whereas the vast majority of sayings focus on character, mercy to others and reaching your Lord through the paths denoted in Islam, Iman, Ihsan, and its prayers, supplication, mannerisms, remembrances, fasting and above all, permissions which should always be the majority focus; the core of our affair.
However, for our discussions, as we are not the most blessed of creation who will be chosen for such instances of Enlightenment, we happily reduce ourselves to considering the element within all of us which will go back to an altered state and an ascension of sorts upon death: our souls.
A human being or insan is one of two Creations that we know of that are imbued with free choice (the other being Jinn, which we shall discuss later). When we discuss free choice here, we refer to the ability to think and act in any number of ways with the abilities we have.
The last few hundred years of history have taught us to view ourselves as an integrated unit which we refer to as ‘I’ - though, we do not know exactly what that notion is. Islamically this ‘I’ is referred to as the soul which is a generally accepted meaning for the word ‘nafs’[25] which is mentioned many times in the Qur'an and is mentioned in relation to pre-earthly and post-earthly sentience. The post-earthly one is where we will be deprived of free choice.
Contrary to popular modern assumption which views human beings from a sensory-first aspect, (i.e., we think of people through what we see them do or hear them say) the prophetic way of perceiving things tells us that some people are excluded from the responsibility of their free choice for various reasons. [26] Some are clear and present to us such as a person in the throes of mental illness or depression, some are clear-cut like the times a person is asleep, whereas some are harder to define such as when exactly a person hits the age of discernment and exactly how much influence a person has on another and therefore stops them from being able to enact their free choice in a way that reflects their own soul’s intention and hence knowingly or unknowingly performing the will of others (be it human or non-human entities).
Islamically, the human body is the vehicle of the soul.[27] The soul's journey starts, for want of a better phrase, as a thought experiment, in a realm before this universe and concepts such as space and time. The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, offers the elements of creation (who would become the mountains, the earth and the skies) the responsibility of having free choice in upholding God’s law to the rest of creation.[28] All these actors in their soulic form refuse the responsibility, and when mankind, as the last of the soulic creations, are offered this great responsibility, we collectively accept it.
After this instance, the souls are gathered in a state or place in which they were put before their Lord and asked individually to attest as to whether or not he was the Lord and creator.[29] All souls that would have even the briefest moment of existence somewhere in the universe, whether at time that is to come or has passed or currently, affirmed that God indeed was their Lord. However, as it was the moment where the first execution of free choice was a possibility, some said it and were honest in what they said, and some said it and did not truly believe what they were saying.[30] This can be seen as an opportunity of enacting free choice and had to happen to prove that the promise of free choice was given.
Although we cannot be 100% sure of exactly how long each stage a soul existed in a certain plane before the earthly world (nor do we need to; if I asked you ‘how long each person’s childhood was’, what would you say?) which is timed in accordance with cycles of our planet around the sun, there is a period where galaxies and all their component parts are created. And we learn of another creature that was allowed the choice of freewill called the Jinn which existed before us.
We also learn that mankind’s first embodiment, in the prophet Adam, was the final in a series of creations long preceded by planets, the gaseous entities we know as stars, beings of light we refer to as angels, and all the animals of Earth. Then Allah {taught Adam the names of all things} [2:31].
We learn that the angels were baffled as to why God would create them knowing that some of us would corrupt the earth. We learn that there is a settled place called the ard, ‘Earth’ or ‘the ground’ which we will be sent to. Finally, we learn that there is another set of creatures who far outnumber us, some of whom will have envy and the like towards us (though they too have free voice to be good), namely: the Jinn.
In understanding our soul’s journey, it is important to remember that each soul within each human comes from this place before space and time. Relevant to psychedelics is the anecdotal references where people believe they have visited some of these times and places and instances and built theories around items such as us ‘coming from the stars’ and seeing ‘beings of light’. For our purposes, we know that the Qur’an explains we (as an execution of free choice[31]) were from a realm before and our bodies are matters of this settled existence.[32]
If psychedelic use is to be understood from the Islamic perspective, knowing and understanding the journey of the soul becomes very important, as are angels as beings of light and also the envious entities referred to above as the Jinn. All of this forms the core component of an Islamic framework through which to begin to understand what we may see, hear and sense while on psychedelics.
From the moment that Adam begins to exercise his free choice,[33] we are given details of how our soul came through his family line till now and became settled on Earth, instead of remaining in the place where we were first created.
This oft-told story gives us an explanation for our purpose and our reason for ending up on Earth: namely our entire existence is to uphold God's oneness, in thought, speech and action, and all that it entails. We find ourselves on Earth for that job as a result of the free choice of our forebears Adam and Eve, much in the same way our physical body’s existence is due to the copulation of our parents - or the mixing of their reproductive essences in other bodies, be they surrogate or IVF procedures.
Just as the soul comes to this world into a body with the responsibility of free choice, it will return to a realm outside the constraints of the body to be questioned on whether or not it adhered to upholding that original promise or ‘Covenant’ it took before its time on earth.
The obvious question then arises, ‘If this happened, why don't I remember it?’ We should take this forgetting as the ultimate mercy!
Whether we are of those who agreed or disagreed that our Lord was One and that we would follow Him is kept a secret from all of us allowing us to know that every single day, or even moment, when we choose to turn to Him, we could be fulfilling the Covenant for the first time. Whereas if we were imbued with the knowledge that all this was true, there would be no free choice. The fact that God knows us and our outcome does not mean that we didn't choose it.
People who use certain types and dosages of psychedelics claim to see and remember things with the inner eye of the soul, the truth of which can only be ascertained in relation to its alignment with the understanding bestowed through the Prophet ﷺ and through the Qur'an.
Different cultures, practices and religions will use different terminology, such as speaking of ‘past lives’ or ‘multiple soulic realities’. As Muslims, if this does not conform to narrations from “The Walking Qur'an” as sourced from the Qur'an, it is, like a movie: nothing more than a sensory illusion.
If one were to question why Islam claims any superiority with its framework for the life of the soul, one must use all resources available to them to assess the veracity of the Qur'an to the same level that they have applied to anything they regard themselves as expert in. The answer is only found there and I have absolutely no interest in explaining any of that here when I have already spent six years of my life explaining the Qur'an in a way that is easy to access.
Furthermore, now that we've established why Muslims believe that the Qur'an creates existence, why Muhammad ﷺ was the perfect conveyor of what a soul should do and a soul's history; we now move on to how the soul manifests within this space, at this time, in human bodies.
It is appropriate now, after the last two chapters, to consider the union of the soul in the body. We are told that this happens on the 40th day after conception.[34] An angel is charged with the role of bringing the soul into the body and that is the point from which most Muslims consider life to originate in the earthly realm.
To the parent and family, this means on the most simple level that their child is born and that they have the responsibility of naming and looking after it. But from an objective standpoint, Islamically, it is a moment in which another soul has been delivered to Earth to execute the upholding or rejection of the Covenant to whatever degree is in God’s knowledge. i.e. they now are an entity with free will.
Every human being is a refraction of a level of commitment possible and we ‘sense’ that. We judge people every single moment by what we hear of them, see of them and think of them, be it when you’re told of a serial killer on the news or some great benefactor in a podcast. Their actions, words and the words of others about them impact your view of them, and it is natural for us to qualify people’s actions as being well or honourable or ill-intentional or rude, and so on.
Indeed the Qur'an tells us that we were only created as an execution of our wish to exist and uphold the trust and our free choice allows us to prove our obedience or disobedience to the submission and harmony that the rest of the Universe finds itself in. A tree cannot choose to change its colour; the sun cannot choose to spin in the other direction at will, the waves have no way to ignore the gravitational pull of the moon and so on and so forth. Ourselves and the jinn are the only creatures we know of with free choice within the limited bodies that we have.
Every tool and resource on Earth and in our bodies can and should be trained and used to bring about betterment for others. Ensuingly, every person will be charged with a different responsibility and aptitude towards this goal based on an infinite number of factors ranging from the lineage in which they were born, to the wealth they might inherit, and with that the hereditary illnesses that might accord with the amount of dopamine receptors within one's brain and even the length of one's fingers.
Any of these can completely change a person's life. In fact, rowers that would become champions were only been sought out in the first place because of the size of their hands, championship basketballers have only been called upon originally because of their height, people have been given privileged positions within the arts or within politics based on their family line and these examples could go on and on.
Because no person has the exact same start in life as any other, it is impossible to judge someone as we simply do not know the inner workings of their brain, the influence of their soul and companion of the Jinn[35] on them and thus the free choice they attempt to enact with the rest of us, whatever we may perceive, is known only to them.
The Qur'an tells us that a time will come in which every person will understand and know the benefits and consequences of every thought manifesting as a choice enacted[36] and in its most simple form we are told we will be rewarded and punished accordingly.[37] However, it is really important to note that reward and punishment are lower levels of motivation. The best form is to understand and adhere to the soul’s purpose to complete the mission given in order, knowing it is being watched by its Creator, to have a safe return to their Lord as a submissive part of creation.
This is why we have free choice and psychedelic insights have been used to try and remedy towards the above, which, when used with this in mind, is essentially a tool for self-improvement and self-reflection and attempt to perfect character as outlined in the prophetic tradition.[38]
To this end, the only thing that worked for some people I have spoken to, was that while using psychedelics, they have seen instances of negative desires taking on a visible form they could relate to. Where that particularly destructive desire was personified as a viewable intently, in their mind’s eye, and this has made them want to stop whatever that negative action was.
More specifically alcohol use and pornographic addiction were seen to manifest as characters in a vision that would lead them to doom and destruction. I do not mean this in a fire and brimstone sense, but more in a ‘This is really not who I want to be or where I want to go’ sense.
Characterising these negative actions in such a clear and accessible way allows them to see the problems that they had with these items in a different light entirely and reduce their use permanently. The meaning here is that the consequences of their choices were shown to them in a very clear way. Or to summarise: Insight, from their inner-sights.
Another aligning factor is the shared imagery that users of psychedelics can comment on. Again, this is not exclusive to psychedelics. It happens within dreams and within moments called astral projection. But the easiest to access it is through a specific grammage of mushroom (adapted to the user’s size) which allows people to experience a deeper sensory insight into themselves.
While this sounds vague, it will be covered in further detail in a later chapter when we look at the construction of images within the mind due to the reflected radiation we see from the visible light spectrum; where we deal with the interaction of our senses and the world around us. For now, though, let us turn our attention to how that freewill manifests, even when we don’t know we are executing free will.
5 - A Human’s Life and Why Some Turn to PsychedelicsMany people at some time or other will have wondered what on earth they are doing on this spinning beautiful rock in a tiny corner of the universe, and because they will have a sensory interaction with that universe, it is hard for them to think of any other but themselves as a centre of that universe.
Their own sensory experiences will then shape the decisions that they make, forgetting and unaware of, at the time of birth, except for a chosen few, of all what we have related in the previous chapter. The exception to this rule is the prophet Jesus, who was born in full knowledge of his state as a soul and spoke such as a baby.[39] Because it was allowed for him, others may also have this blessing bestowed upon them, and if so it is merely a Grace from God and a refraction of the archetype we've seen God allow before. Thus, it could happen again as there is no injunction prohibiting such a possibility. It is said of the great Muslim saint, Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, that as a baby he would not take his mother’s milk except between sunset and dawn,[40] indicating that he was observing the rules of fasting. In any case, these miraculous feats would not liberate the person from following divinely revealed rules and beliefs that are given to all of us.
As a side note, people regard such items as miracles if they are believers, but the biggest miracle of all is that people are born not knowing that they are a soulic manifestation of the Qur'an’s emanation, which could exemplify itself by following the Prophet ﷺ, to uphold the free choice made by their soulic form.
Indeed, Islamically not upholding God's law and therefore acting and thinking in a way not in accordance with submission is what causes calamity in life and calamity on the Earth.
An interesting example of this is when an earthquake struck Medina and Khalifa Omar gave a sermon in which he blamed the earthquake on people's actions.[41] Though at first sight, this might sound far-fetched from a sensory point of view, I remind you of the influence our use of plastic has on the environment. We know it is verifiable and we know we put that plastic there, because we took the crude oil it is made from out of the earth, and the Qur’an tells us that humans tamper with God’s creation: {I will mislead them} the Devil says {and I will command them so that they change the creation of Allah} [Qur’an 4:119]
One instance is surely more dramatic and immediate than the other but both are brought about by our actions and we do have the tools to ascertain and gain verifiable understanding of the connection between what we do and the resultant effects, even though we may choose to ignore it. Again, not knowing is a divine grace, otherwise we would likely find much of our modern lives unpalatable. Let’s not talk about emissions from cars and health risks, genetically modified food and the factories of pollution feeding chemicals to animals whose genders are now changing, as plastics swirl around inside them.
To not know you are an eternal soul and that you are bound by a cause-and-effect relationship from your thoughts and actions on all the creatures around you is a mercy in itself as it allows everyone to be an execution of faith, denial, ignorance or hypocrisy to whatever degree they find themselves in or push themselves towards.
Many of us live in a crystallisation of other people's thoughts: we follow a schooling system, a healthcare system and a social interaction system largely in line with those generations that came before us and left us to contend with the pleasures and pressures that come with that. What other people have left for us to do, we do, whether it be the types of food we make permissible for ourselves, career pathways, or even spiritual methodologies.
Almost everything that we do as humans is in some way bound by our physical limitations, the limitations of our current tools and what has been left for us as blueprints, as influential as the postcode in which we're born and the influence on us by those around us. It is impossible for anyone to say they have truly done something themselves because the very heartbeat that they rely on was something that they had no say in, nor is who they were born to, or the technological developments they rely on within their age. Though a person can change their world in a multitude of ways from operations on their body to the amount that they smile, through to the type of food they consume and the people that they interact with, we all need hearts and brains and vascular systems to enact any of those things in the first instance even when we believe we transcend them.
Living in these crystallisations of thought has created much that is generally viewed as a positive and much that is viewed is negative. Individually these are, of course, points of perception that may become socially acceptable (or rejected) and thus may become best practice, socially desirable and in some instances even become law with rewards, hierarchies and consequences.
Due to the material obsession foisted on most people and the safety they crave from this way of looking at the world, and the human experience within it, many people never even begin to consider themselves a soulic being from another realm that is only here to uphold a covenant if it so chooses. Thus many people suffer, unable to understand their unique place given to them as part of creation. The soul, an ignored trapped animal in the body, is never given the sustenance or right it deserves.
The religions that people interact with are of course not exempt from being perceived as positive and negative but it is probably a better binary to refer to in terms of the genuine and hypocritical, and then all the degrees within that.
Within these constructs of thoughts, people are taught to “find themselves”. They are taught to try and be happy when they come into certain states or situations, to be content, satisfied, happy or any other modern equivalent such as being ‘one with yourself’. If these states aren’t realised, they will search for other means and ways of trying to find a crystallisation of thought that allows them to feel good sensorially, temporarily.
This may take the form of being at peace, being contented, being excited, being part of something, being dangerous, being risky, etc., to infinite possibilities. And as we've seen from every instance in history, anything can give people a version of this feeling for a time. Psychedelic use also falls into this category and people use psychedelics for an infinite number of reasons, but the most popular current approach is for self-understanding and healing.
People who call themselves religious and, more precisely for our purposes, those who call themselves “Muslims”, are no different. Many will look for ways of dealing with pain, boredom, depression, the need to fit in, the need to belong, and the need for excitement and psychedelics will be on offer to them.
Human beings can interact with the psychedelic realm for religious reasons explicitly, such as is done with Brazilian churches of Ayahuasca. They can interact with its formal uses such as with the goal of curing depression and other states of mental discontent, and for entertainment and recreational purposes.
In order to facilitate safe use, it is therefore important and incumbent on the clerical and scholarly level of Muslims to consider psychedelic use in the same way as any other part of creation: something offered to us by God where its use and utilisation within the right framework and context can help edge us closer to understanding the essential triad of the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and our souls.
Ideally any interaction that we have with any part of creation should be in unison and aim for better submission with the minimum amount of external aids as possible, but none of us are starting with a clean slate and more importantly, many have found little to progress them through typical medication.
Since the use of psychedelics are becoming more prevalent as people become more disenfranchised with modern living, having a framework to understand what's on offer from them is essential.
The writer can personally attest to cases of Muslims successfully using psychedelics to overcome addiction, appreciate the nature of the world around them, improve prayer and diminish the power of a destructive desire, to name but a few positive instances.
All such practical improvements can, of course, be found in dozens of other ways but they are time-consuming and people do not feel they have the time. Sometimes they do not have the will to dedicate themselves to such things in the face of the onslaught of modernity and all its technologies and seductive conveniences.
Thus, there may be good reasons to allow some to use psychedelics in a controlled setting, within the sacred framework mentioned for their betterment and as they strive towards better submission. Each instance will be as varied as the individual.
The pressing question, here, is how much of an intoxicant a psychedelic can be considered to be. It is always surprising that something so cheap and naturally occurring and easily applied, is illegal, while petrochemical solutions with often disastrous side effects and dependencies are touted as solutions when they are so damagingly addictive and have scattergun efficacy.
Experiments with some of the best-selling antidepressants show or indicate they only really work well on 11 in 100 people, whereas over 90% of experiments with micro-dosing have been of benefit. In these instances, the goal was to improve social functioning and remove commonly undesirable thoughts.
Of course, it can be argued that each human could eventually be talked out of their mode of thinking if you were to change their environment, social-familial world or way of thinking, but the time and cost efficiency here compared to psychedelic use is way off. Dutch researchers indicate that a single trip on Ayahuasca for example can compare favourably and match the equivalent of two years of weekly therapy.
Earlier we mentioned that we all live in a crystallisation of thought and it must be noted that our scholars also live within this realm generally, and therefore when they recommend therapies and medication, they are unwittingly furthering current business-focused approaches to wellness, human improvement, and human understanding. Petrochemical medicines and therapist-client relationships are first and foremost businesses spawned off of the non-existence of real food and its prohibitive costs and the breakdown of the family unit and time to explore and learn about who we are as families and communities as we are so torn apart and time poor.[42]
This is one of the many reasons why psychedelics have become popular: they do what other forms of self-healing and self-improvement pertain to but fail to do, and they do them a lot faster.
Of course, before we begin to explore where psychedelics fit in with Islam, we will return to the idea of what other generations and nations were taught in their practices and scriptures just to see what can be gleaned from them, and, sadly, what is ignored within their teachings. More importantly, we will ask ourselves: if we find good in there that aligns with elements of our Prophet’s ﷺ sunnah, can we do it too?
Our scripture says that we were {made into different peoples and communities so that you might come to know each other} [Qur’an 49:13] and thus to learn from one another. Given the doctrine that there were 124,000[43] prophets and 313 messengers who came with scripture, it is obvious that there is far more to learn from other cultures and other humans than we give them credit for. Though some will take issue with this number or source, the Qur’an states Allah sent messengers to every nation, and in a pre-internet world, where it is assumed over 100 billion people have already lived, 124,000 starts to look a little on the light side.[44] Remember, no phones, no newspapers, no Instagram, those prophets would have blown up their pedometers.
In our closest interaction with Islam, we can look at the stories of other prophets who we know had ways of life or sunnahs to adhere to. Even an instance or two mentioned by the Prophet ﷺ could be enough of a signpost to go and learn from other cultures who may well have focused on the therapeutic use of psychedelic plants.
So when the Prophet ﷺ Muhammad says Allah has 99 names and instructs us to call on Him through them, we can look to our Jewish predecessors, some of whom gave great importance to the very letters of the Hebrew language[45] and the words they formed which they believed allowed them to understand reality in the fullest way; namely in constructing the names of God. Aspects of the practice referred to in Kabbalahic approaches and many Jewish scholars and mystics look to try and understand the universe through the names God.[46] At least in the West, and in the English language, this is almost never discussed or considered by Western Muslims: i.e., that the letters and the shaping of the letters themselves have a power and explanation for some part of understanding the nature of God and are essential to this understanding. Indeed 29 chapters of the Qur'an start with extolling individual letters, their meaning, much debated, without conclusion.
Another example can be seen in the Prophet’s ﷺ teaching that ‘the devils run through our blood’, which could allude to Buddhist traditions (found in the Tibetan Book of the Dead) which hold that different entities and demigods can be found in our bodies and must be confronted and tamed in preparation for Buddhist meditation and ritual practice.
Similarly, the Prophet ﷺ also mentioned that each person has a companion entity with them, which include the recording angels (that record the virtues and ill-deeds) or the jinn who inspires him to ill-deeds and the angel who inspires him to virtue. Whether it was jinn coming to listen to the Prophet ﷺ as he recited the Qur'an or whether it was angels taking human form or assisting him in battle, these ideas are favourable to Japanese Shinto tradition which regard spirits to be in everything and make the exploration and interaction with them a part of everyday life. Their approach is not limited to angels and other ethereal spirits but also to every inanimate object, which, again parallels the Prophet ﷺ communicating even with mountains and rocks.
There is much evidence of the psychedelic use of mushrooms in other pre-modern civilisations, some of whom revered it as ‘flesh of the gods’. Not surprisingly, then, the Prophet ﷺ said that the fungi, from which the mushrooms are derived, is ‘a healing for the eyes’ and was also ‘a manna like ones given to the Children of Israel’, in the years in the desert after being saved from captivity in Egypt.[47]
This is also of interest as the Children of Israel he refers to seem to be the ones in Moses’ time as they are the ones who the Qur'an denotes as having received manna, and they are the most heavily miraculised group mentioned within the Qur'an: they saw their Prophet, Moses, perform the most miracles and it was their Prophet who had to battle sorcerers.
Therefore, in other times of crystallisation of thought, psychedelics were used for people to improve their standing and place within the cosmos by helping them better understand the universe in which they lived. Muslims, today, would do well to study their uses, considering the Prophet’s ﷺ connecting mushrooms with the miraculous character of manna: “Truffles are like manna and their water heals eye diseases.”[48] Mushrooms, he ﷺ taught elsewhere, is one of the seventy different species of manna, and alluded to its heavenly character in the words: “Heaven laughed and mushrooms came out; the earth laughed and capers came out.”[49] That he ﷺ described them as a ‘healing for the eyes’ draws attention immediately to its therapeutic and remedial benefits, and if the “eyes” may be read both physiologically and spiritually, as basar (eyesight) and baseera (insight), then this healing can have lasting, transformative effects. {It is not their eyesights which are blind but the hearts in their breasts which are blind} [Qur’an 22:46] and thus the Prophet ﷺ taught in prayer: “O Allah make me see the reality as reality is, and give me the means to follow, and make me see falsehood as falsehood actually is, and give me the means to avoid it”.[50] Modernity’s vandalism of the natural world has not merely alienated us from nature, but, more profoundly, impaired our perception of reality itself. Here, in this prophetic medicine, be a source of profound and thorough healing.
As with anything, moderation and dosage is important and things such as cultural background, level of trauma suffered, and even kilogram weight in the body must be considered. The question could also be framed not as if psychedelics are in and of themselves impermissible or intoxicating but whether or not psychedelic use is better overall than other crutches for dealing with modern life such as coffee and amphetamines and antidepressants.
The last point we will say on this is probably the most important. A central prophetic notion to all action is that each action is judged by the intention.[51] If our intention is to replace the artificial with the natural and the expensive with the cheap, what logical resistance would we then find? Unless we aim to maintain the status quo and the notion of profit before people and to accept profit from illness as part of our approach to wellness.
Some will argue that there are already prophetic remedies for ailments of which the Prophet ﷺ obviously mentioned, namely cupping and honey, but the former can cost upwards of £50 to £70 a turn, and the latter has been so diluted by commercial profit-driven tactics that actual honey in most that people can afford is near zero. Chocolatiers, for instance, raised a lawsuit against the commercial confectioners like Cadbury and Mars, saying that their chocolates hardly contained any cocoa. Honey growers, too, are now pursuing litigation against items commonly sold as honey that are nothing more than melted molasses and coloured sugar.[52]
There is obviously a great range of opinions as to what is acceptable and what isn't. There are certain things such as prayer that are an absolute cornerstone and no one would dare for a moment consider discouraging Muslims to abandon it (even though some Islamic groups do). But the religious place of psychedelics can be likened to the Prophet’s ﷺ advice to wash your hands before doing anything.[53] It’s contested whether he actually said this in those words, but the advice (in the light of so many of his teachings on hygiene) is clearly true in another sense and beneficial, so we are allowed to act upon it. Likewise, if we generally can assume and see that controlled psychedelic use has benefits and can replace antidepressants and give those who need it sensory experiences that they can cling to in better understanding themselves while fully functioning within society, surely its benefits are clear. Let's get into that notion in a little more detail about what it is we are dealing with.
The concordance of religion and psychedelic use has a long and varied history. Psychedelics have been used in religious ceremonies for centuries, dating back to the ancient world. In some cultures, such as the Aztecs and Mayans, psychedelics were used as part of religious rituals. In other cultures, such as the Native American Church, psychedelics are still used today in religious ceremonies that are designed to connect people with the divine.
There are a number of reasons why psychedelics have been used in religious ceremonies. One reason is that they can produce profound changes in consciousness that can lead to spiritual insights. Psychedelics can also help people to connect with nature and the divine. In addition, psychedelics can be used to facilitate healing and transformation. This of course is termed in many different ways depending on the religion in question, but for our purposes, we could refer to it as removing the Veils between us and reality. [54]
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics. A number of clinical trials have shown that psychedelics can be effective in treating conditions such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As a result of this research, there is a growing movement to legalise psychedelics for therapeutic use.
Some religious groups have been supportive of this movement. For example, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to the research and development of psychedelics for therapeutic use. MAPS has worked with a number of religious groups to develop protocols for the safe and effective use of psychedelics in religious ceremonies. But however safe and well-intentioned those aspects are, it always comes up against the human issue of desire.
An important prophetic teaching warns us that mankind will always desire and that each of the children of Adam will ultimately only be satisfied with the dirt that will fill their mouth in the grave.[55] Living in a time rife with addiction tools of all kinds from phones to fashion and the worlds they spawn, it is very hard to avoid and distance oneself from these desires. Even when we are not slaves to the exterior desires, the interior ones are calling on us too to make ourselves better than other people in an argument, better than other people in speech, better than people in social standing, and generally place ourselves within a hierarchy.
We are also told that the desires we should have should be towards doing good and fulfilling the religious practices that allow us to enact and internalise better submission.
Psychedelics encourage stillness and introspection when taken properly. Anyone worth their salt giving advice on the psychedelic movement or psychedelic use will tell you that setting and intention are extremely important. Though it is not immune to status-seeking where people brag about the range of things that they've tried, its dosage, and how often they've tried it, experienced users will often tell and understand that because the psychedelic work is so personal there is no hierarchy of usage. Terence McKenna’s work has laid a basic framework to help people understand what gram dosage could do to the average person to help people know, what could happen, or ‘where they could be’ ‘or what to expect sensorially’ when they are taking it. I’m sure he was trying to be as light touch as possible with his framework, he knows as well as any how much our understanding of what can happen influences what does happen.[56]
As with any tool, some people will try to put themselves in extremes whilst other people will be extremely cautious. But the very nature of most group practice that the writer has come across is a form of seclusion / group-support and reflection.[57] In every one of the instances of the writer’s participation, in different countries, with many people, from many different cultures, taking time out and supporting one another and being technology-free, are core components for successful interaction with higher doses of psychedelics.
Oddly enough, this then forms mini-societies where people gather and accept each other regardless of social standing. Ideally, this is what Muslims would wish for the ummah to be like, and of course, prayer is as such, but generally only for 10 minutes a few times a day. Psychedelic retreats are normally a minimum of three days going up to 10. The bonds, trust, and sharing create an excellent bedrock from which to lessen arrogant desire and lessen haste.
Of course, Islamically we know nothing can be better than fasting and dhikr (as do many other traditions) to elicit such effects, but for those who simply cannot engage meaningfully in these modes of spiritual practice, psychedelic use has offered a way into reflective spaces and patient acceptance rather than being a slave to whims and desires. Please remember that every time I mention this I'm referring to dosages low and within an Islamic framework of using them in the same way you might have certain vegetables in a salad, a little something topping it off, rather than a main course.
One thing that is impossible to track is the roots of the desires that people have. Most users are trying to get towards some sense of joy through security or rid themselves of the frustrations of various negativities or anxieties. In such a way I would argue that every single thing in life is ultimately aligned with a human being's quest to prove their existence and the hope of warding off death. Even religious people view their religious practice through the realms of the physical body and the notion of time. The starting point for most people is that they are a vehicle to be nurtured through a time on Earth with other people and achieve something of meaning to themselves and others. Most of the time, people are not following desires that they themselves concoct. They adhere to or follow the received crystallisation of other people's thoughts and the artefacts that arise from that; their aspirational ideals and vision of success are embedded in another’s framework.
I would further argue then that it is not religious notions or religious practising that we are missing but ultimately contentment. Whether it's a CEO who wants to develop a company that achieves the mythical unicorn status (so common now Deca-corns have become the new ‘in thing’) or wishing to change their gender and be their ‘authentic selves’, the desires that descend on us at anytime are an absolute lottery. Put simply, whatever one is exposed to can be something they fall prey to and this works both ways with the advent of the internet age and the incalculable libraries of information and “content” available to us. We live in an age where anything goes, the vestige of living in the crystallisation of other people’s thoughts.
Desire, then, is an inevitable condition; all we can do is try to set up guard rails for people to avoid hurting themselves and social norms and the legal accommodations made to align this with ever-shifting social norms. We often see people and hear of people using labelling to define themselves this way and that. But to a Muslim, the core of what we are is always a soul returning to God - a soul on a journey with the mission of upholding and remembering the covenantal agreements of believing in Allah’s lordship. And with that, it’s time to move on to a critical piece of the puzzle and our interaction with psychedelics, our senses, and the visual cortex.
Generally, our desires are absorbed from our social world, typically from birth. Indeed the Prophet ﷺ said that every human being was born on the fitra which is generally taken to mean an inclination towards truth and virtue, but are after emerging into the world, moulded by their parents and social environment into specific beliefs and perceptions.[58]
This influence will first come to us through one of our senses. We will see an action or an action will be told to us or we will be forced into some kind of physical movement which will form the basis for the way that we may choose to live. Of course, sometimes we are also taught how to be by seeing lots of examples of how not to be but even then this is still something attuned to us or given to us by our senses.
Therefore, our senses and the quality and experiences we attune to from those sensory inputs construct our entire world.
Sight is the most universal of all these things: if we see a man killing another man, wherever it is in the world, if we have no context for it, we will generally be alarmed and in a heightened state of alarm. We cannot really smell a man killing another man or at least the writer hasn't experienced it to be able to denote it, nor can we taste another man killing another man.
We can directly hear or indirectly be told of a man killing another, and that might evoke a sense of alarm, and because it's not immediate to our senses, we are unlikely to be as alarmed as when we see it happen.
This example is there to demonstrate the power of sight ahead of the other senses in our decision-making. Remember, as we said in one of the previous chapters, desires pull us toward and away from things, and experiences do the same. Strange, then, that sight has so much power over us, when in fact it is also the most constructed of the senses or, at least, sight is that which the brain spends the most energy constructing.
The eye works in multiple stages. The retina and the pupil provide focus and give us the amount of light on an image. This image is then transferred to the cones and receptors and the back of the eye, the retina, which gives us the depth of the 3D texturing of an image and its colours. These colours are given to us by the three cones which perceive red, blue and green and, as you likely know, when the image is formed on the back of the eye, it is upside down. The image is then sent as signals to our visual cortex, flipped to be “the right way round” and then the image is processed along with every other piece of information that we have on existence in our brains.
With this in mind, social studies reports show that some people who live in tougher neighbourhoods will perceive a placid face as more aggressive because they are used to seeing aggressive faces. And indeed, one third of our brain's power at any one time is constructing the world around us in what we see, and this is the prime way that most people with sight interact with the world, so we could argue what we know literally influences what we see.
The light that we are seeing is a form of radiation from the sun bouncing off material objects around us to start this process. The visible light spectrum that we can see is one ten millionth of the range of light and frequencies of radiation available to us. We know we can use tools to see other parts of the spectrum of light when we look at x-rays or use ultraviolet tools. Thus we are only seeing what we can see, and we use tools such as X-rays in order to enhance our vision, be that through preparing for an operation or assessing weapon-carrying possibilities in certain public places.
We know that every X-ray has a radiation exposure level, but we tolerate this as a trade-off with the technology’s clinical benefits. Psychedelic use can be thought of in the same way. Some posit that it simply allows us to see into different light spectrums; others claim that it allows us to look at parts of our blood as it flows through the visual cortex; others say that it taps into your DNA and ancestral inheritance. It is impossible to articulate what it's doing outside of the jargon of materialist scientists who, today, have a monopoly on trusted opinion.
Since we already use insights into different parts of the spectrum of light and radiation forms for our benefit to understand the world around us, the jump to using psychedelics to allow us to explore possibly different instances of what is sensorily possible should not be discounted.
Indeed we know that animals hear at different levels than we do and can see different colour ranges than we can, sometimes in much more depth, and we also know of the prophetic tradition where certain animals would be more inclined to see things from the ethereal realm than we do. Everyone is familiar with the idea of dogs barking at things that aren't ‘there’ and we also know that the Prophet ﷺ said that when the donkey brays, know that a jinn is nearby[59] and elsewhere he also taught that when a crow caws or a rooster croaks, an angel is nearby.[60] It could be that the animal's ability to see in more detail and in different spectrums allows them to see the entities we cannot see.
If the argument is then posed that we are naturally given the settled reality with our senses and should only use them, then the same would go for the x-rays and other tools we use to give us different instances of sight and abilities of sight. Furthermore, over the last 70 years, the introduction of screens as a main focal point for the eyes is one of the most damaging to the eyes. There are movements across the world to introduce the notion of ‘far gazing’, one of the more observed modern terms for basically looking into the distance. However absurd the term might be, it is ultimately needed because people are spending so much time on screens for work and screens in their pockets, we are literally losing the ability to see well. [61]
If we are literally watching this happen within one generation of screens what then of the reduced ability to see what could be seen since we do not even live within nature anymore? And most people will pass a day barely seeing any trees, let alone animals, let alone fields, let alone insects, etc. etc. etc.
And this isn’t just a personal perspective, it’s likely that even ancient nature-based tribes would see it. Our ability to see and understand our place within the wider cosmic order has been drastically diminished by the modern industrialised cityscape, which has alienated us from nature.
A tourist venture back into the forest will, of course, not restore what has been lost, and since we're now raised by generations of people who no longer practise an outdoor lifestyle or a nature-balanced lifestyle, how can they teach us any of it? As there is no one left practising that knowledge, how can we become good at it when almost every modern interaction requires a screen and not an interaction with nature?
Part of my argument, here, is that the senses we use to perceive reality are so far removed from the context in which the ancient prophetic messages were revealed: one that presumed man’s existence within and part of natural order. We are literally living in an epoch of the blind leading the blind because we can no longer see what we are detuned from seeing and making up for that with petrochemical food and medication.
So how can we see things differently and immediately with our senses? Give them a kick start, a resurrection, or even just a lick of paint. Well, we may as well start at the top of the pyramid and introduce my good friend DMT.
DMT, or N-Dimethyltryptamine, is a powerful psychedelic drug that occurs naturally in many plants and animals. It is also produced in the human brain, although its function is not fully understood. DMT is typically smoked, snorted, or injected, and its effects are felt within minutes. The drug produces a short-lived but intense psychedelic experience, characterised by vivid hallucinations, altered perceptions of time and space, and a sense of oneness with the universe. Some people report feeling as if they have died and been reborn during a DMT trip.
Users of psychedelics generally attest to a change in their sensory perception: they can hear, see, taste and sometimes smell this change. Sometimes there are instances of synesthesia (they experience one of their senses through the stimulation of another, such as “smelling colours” or “visualising sounds” as shapes or colours). This simply shows us that the reality we believe in is merely a construction of the senses.
If we were to jolt through this experience, we could begin to understand much more than the material world around us. Thus much of what the Qur'an tells will seem far more plausible since we know that up to that point, our understanding of religion and God and scripture was simply through our senses. Again as I’ve stressed, this was always my reality anyway, but the closest I get to seeing what I see in those instances is through DMT.
The assumption here for the reader might be that I am encouraging the attempted removal of ‘veils between us and reality’, to induce visions, to see ethereal bodies - not at all! The purpose above all else is to see how constructed your reality could be, how your sense of time is, how your sense of space is… once you know there is a way to change your perception, your being, I believe to understand the un-understandable physics, or lack thereof, of another day - a day perhaps when mountains[62] will float away, a day where tongues, and not the mouths that hold them will speak,[63] a day when angels will descend - Qur’anic truth after Qur’anic truth shown as a possibility. It’s not what you see that matters, it’s the fact your brain, or could it be your soul, is creating something you thought impossible, and known only in that detail to you.
Generations before us would have done the same thing but many who have the privilege of insight from those generations would have had a greater capacity for reflection and meditation without less of the pressures of modernity that we find ourselves contending with.
Further, it is possible that traditional food we would have eaten would have been naturally better at promoting the production of DMT in our bodies. Some might argue that the diet of previous generations included more DMT, but this is wrong for two reasons. First, as far as we know, plants with a high DMT content were not part of the traditional foods they reserved for religious practice. Secondly, the DMT compound doesn't seem to work orally consumed raw due to enzymes in the body that inhibit its effects. It must be combined with other things in order to bring about the hallucinogenic effects.
To further counter this, there is a curious piece of research on a certain type of frog whose sweat also induces hallucinogenic possibilities known as sapo. The possibilities that could stem from this frog’s sweat were very exciting, however, when the frog was taken out of its natural habitat and no longer ate the plants and insects that it used to survive on, its sweat no longer produced anything of hallucinogenic or psychoactive value. The secretions only occurred to the desired effect when it was within its natural habitat.[64]
It is therefore almost impossible to study the ingested value of DMT plants if we remove the plant and the people from the setting in which they are found. This may be part of a larger problem in social science research and may be why so much of it is irreplicable.
There is very little chance of us now eating unadulterated food, so the chances of ever understanding if there was a correlation between natural food consumption within certain areas of the world and increased DMT production within the body is virtually impossible.
Naturally occurring levels of DMT in the human body are still a subject of scientific investigation and debate. While DMT is found in trace amounts in various tissues and bodily fluids, its precise physiological role and concentration remain uncertain.
Endogenous DMT is thought to be produced in small quantities in the human body, potentially synthesised within the pineal gland, lung tissue, and other organs. However, the exact levels of naturally occurring DMT in the body have not been definitively determined, and measurements are challenging due to its low concentration and rapid metabolising.
Some researchers suggest that endogenous DMT levels in the body may be insufficient to produce the profound hallucinogenic effects associated with exogenous (external) administration. The effects of DMT experienced in traditional rituals or recreational use typically result from significantly higher doses than would occur naturally.
I've talked here about some of the aspects of DMT worth considering from my experience. It is the strongest vision-inducing psychedelic, a characteristic I find most appealing. It’s also the shortest lasting. The next chapter will contain slightly more detail about why people use psychedelics, but from my limited use of the following, I’d invite the reader to consider the following:
I have taken mushrooms some 30 times before I stopped counting, San Pedro twice, Ayahuasca 12 times and DMT more times than I could have ever remembered or counted.
I have not found these items to be addictive in nature and use them as different tools, just as someone might use a pencil or a paintbrush and a range of colours in different ways.
My state of mind at any given time in my life has always correlated with experiences I received on a psychedelic trip. All of this has made me want to improve as a person, to be more patient with others and to understand the connection between the sensory world, the imaginal world and the religious world much more.
I would class my own use as recreational and research-driven. My experience started before an operation to remove a tumour, and I asked myself what I would have liked to have done before I died. The answer led me to mushrooms. Just a case of ‘why not?’
From there my interest snowballed. The only real change in my life from that point was a much deeper understanding of previous unexplainable but religiously understandable experiences that have been happening to me since I was 24.
In terms of negatives, the only thing that I can really hold on to is that there are some people who I do not find honest, who I no longer wish to speak to though previously I would humour them.
I think it is very important to still have such people in your life because you never know when they may change and wish to correct and move away from some of their negative behaviours. But since taking plant medicines and finding myself much more accepting of people and their situation in general, lies are something I have really, really grown to dislike and for some reason can no longer abide. That is the only negative I can point to of my psychedelic use.
On a wider scale, any financial transaction or power transaction in this work must be questioned, the vulnerability of participants is cause enough to never allow it, but so would the damage one could cause in a car, if they had no idea how to drive.
But, and I stress, ever since I've been interested in the Qur'an, I have thought of it as the basis for all understanding of behaviour. Then, down the line, when I worked on my rendition, I understood it as the core for the actualisation of existence. Thus, with this as a base, the mushrooms have been a branch or twig of that tree, especially since everything that happened in every journey happened in some form or way through another practice that had no psychedelic involvement whatsoever. What follows is a general summary of the effects of DMT, all of which have been experienced, but I would argue are lower-level applications and insight. They are here for the curious observer who might be wondering what to expect in an objective and general sense. Most important for my focus on what we see (as it covers so much of what we interact with) is the effect on the visual cortex.
But first it is worth mentioning the other end of the spectrum, with some noted benefits of Mushroom microdosing.
Mushroom microdosing has gained considerable attention in recent years as a practice that involves consuming very small amounts of psychedelic mushrooms for various potential benefits. This reference essay aims to explore the benefits of mushroom microdosing based on available research and anecdotal evidence. While it is important to acknowledge that research in this area is still limited, the existing body of knowledge provides valuable insights into the potential advantages of this practice.
1. Enhanced Cognitive Function:
One of the primary benefits attributed to mushroom microdosing is the potential enhancement of cognitive function. Many users report improved focus, concentration, and mental clarity during microdosing periods. Research suggests that low doses of psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, may stimulate the growth of new neurons and increase the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein crucial for learning and memory.[65]
2. Mood Enhancement and Emotional Well-being:
Microdosing mushrooms has been linked to positive changes in mood and emotional well-being. Anecdotal evidence suggests that microdosing may alleviate symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. It is believed that psilocybin interacts with serotonin receptors in the brain, potentially leading to increased serotonin levels, which are associated with improved mood and emotional resilience.[66]
3. Creativity and Problem-Solving:
Mushroom microdosing has been embraced by individuals seeking to enhance their creativity and problem-solving abilities. Some users report experiencing enhanced lateral thinking, increased insightfulness, and greater access to their creative potential. These effects may be attributed to the altered state of consciousness induced by microdosing, allowing individuals to approach challenges and thought processes from new perspectives.[67]
4. Increased Energy and Productivity:
Microdosing mushrooms has been linked to increased energy levels and enhanced productivity. Some users report experiencing heightened motivation, improved stamina, and an overall sense of drive and focus. These effects may be attributed to the stimulation of dopamine receptors, which are associated with reward and motivation.[68]
5. Mindfulness and Spiritual Growth:
For some individuals, mushroom microdosing serves as a tool for personal growth, self-reflection, and spiritual exploration. Microdosing can facilitate a heightened state of mindfulness, allowing users to be more present and aware of their thoughts, emotions, and surroundings. This heightened state of consciousness can provide individuals with valuable insights, foster personal development, and promote a sense of connectedness.[69]
None of this is of course applicable without risk, but neither is any medicine, when asking people through this, I ensure I explain what is going to happen and why, much of which I’ve explained in the nature of reality. I make sure Qur’anic verses are playing throughout any experiences for the protection offered for any feelings and insights experienced on influencing the visual cortex.
Psychedelics, such as psilocybin and DMT, have a profound impact on the brain, including the visual cortex[70]. The visual cortex is responsible for processing visual information from the eyes and plays a crucial role in our perception of the visual world. When under the influence of psychedelics, the visual cortex undergoes significant changes, leading to altered visual experiences. Here are some key effects on the visual cortex:
As mentioned, this is a summary of what one can expect to physically occur when using psychedelics. One thing that is never really talked about is continuum effect, similar to picking up a dream from where you left off, so that it is recycled, and a concordance and meaning develop alongside it. Now, we will take a general look at the overarching benefit people see in psychedelic usage, how it has influenced individuals, thus groups and thus permeated religious notions and thinking.
This piece of work started with an introduction to the Qur'an as the basis for reality, which is that the word ‘Be’ (kun) from the Lord and the subsequent 99 names are carriers from which all other experiences are predicated.
If we take this point of view and the totality of our existence as being the emanation of the Eternal word of the Lord in the form of the Qur'an (and previous scriptures attested to in Islamic belief,) we know, then, that everything on earth is also a manifestation of this divine kun.
In the Qur'an we are told by God Almighty that He breathed His spirit into plant.[76] We are told to eat of the good things We have provided for you, and we are told that manna (of which one species included mushrooms) was sent to the children of Israel, alluded to in the hadith as a food from heaven.
Now, although I alluded to the shirk custom of “spirit-calling” or “spirit-worship” in some ancient religious traditions rooted in plant medicine, nevertheless, I admittedly, such phenomena can very much normalise the fact that we share our world with creatures of another realm, such as the jinn - normalise it to the point that it becomes as much as reality as our sharing this phenomenal world with animals.
We know this relationship to be true even if not sensorially true. One reason for expanding people's awareness of psychedelics is to also allow them to remove some of the “charlatan” appendages to the movement, with its healers, soothsayers, fortune tellers who, without stable metaphysical frameworks to direct their “disciples” simply encourage others to be like them.
This explains my motive for the chapter on “Desire”: if people understand that they can reach certain levels of awareness to a spiritual world or an ethereal world through psychedelics, it is very likely they will want to do that and manifest some type of desire through it.
This is an area where, I’d say, anyone using psychedelics to have a spiritual encounter for the first time, must know that it will always be secondary to what the Qur'an says. It is one of the reasons that I shaped the book in this way, starting with the Qur'an as the reality. It is God’s rope, so hold firmly to it!
I have lost count of the number and type of experience that happened which can be like in the psychedelics but occurred any time of the day and night. For me the most profound of these was seeing and meeting the Prophet ﷺ and seeing The Silver Kaaba in the sky above the Kaaba in Mecca. The most frightening was the very first encounter where my vision and hearing were overtaken for five days by a malevolent force.
The reason I stress this here is because the best and worst vision that's ever come to me had nothing to do with psychedelics. The psychedelics merely helped me understand what could be happening in reality as I normally see it. If you desire to know more than your senses can, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that the creatures you will see in the realm, we are told, mix 99 lies with one truth. I treat all of them in the same way I treat a person in the earthly realm. If something they say aligns to the Qur'an and Sunnah, I listen. If it doesn't, I don't. My desire was to understand how this can be aligned with the Qur’anic framework and while there is much more detail and nuance to explain this framework, an explanation for higher dosage use psychedelics should suffice most people's interest. If it doesn't, please check your intention.
If quests for Jinn communication are what is desired, you may be outside the fold of Islam. Please don’t take this lightly and do not lead other people there. You may, of course, presume that I consider myself an exception to the rule. Trust me, I don’t. I didn’t know what was happening on some trips fully, until I associated myself with many people who didn’t use a Qur’anic framework and saw the shirk clear and plain. Do not head that way. Ever. Warners warn.
Back to our focus. For our purposes, though, we will look closely at one source from which fortune tellers and soothsayers derive knowledge of the unseen: communication with the Jinn.
Because none of my experiences or anyone’s are verifiable or replicable in their exact nature, there is no guarantee that these experiences form any sort of basis of truth. They are, however, interestingly corroborated with other people’s experiences and use of psychedelics, but the terminology and relationship between subjects who take or don’t take psychedelics varies dramatically. Just as research on psychedelics is, thus far, nascent and inconclusive, so it is with academic approaches to the jinn and the jinn realm.
The Unseen realm contains many different elements and entities, but we will focus here on the one I think will provoke the most challenging problems if they cannot be explained in an Islamic framework. We know how easily one can fall into bad habits and how bad habits can lead to rejection of faith and most fatally, shirk.
Because we live in a society where we are not viewed as souls on a journey - and the slightest attempt to communicate that are characterised as “new age” and “not the absolute truth from the absolute Creator” - people are influenced by all types of ideas as to who and what is having an effect on them and how and why things work out or don’t work out.
The terminology used within certain psychedelic groups can, from an Islamic perspective, be classed as “calling on jinn or other than Allah” for help or assistance. We will explore this in the next chapter. However, let me say outright that the Qur'an as an influence on me, my mind, my logic, the way I see things is deeply rooted in the Revelation. I believe everything in the Qur'an is utterly true and speaks that truth through archetypal representations in its similitudes, allegories and definitive meanings. You can take lessons from it for all things.
When I'm not walking around on autopilot, I tend to see things within archetypal references. In practice, this means I think of people archetypically as either having prophetic qualities or pharaonic qualities (representative characters in sacred drama of truth confronting evil, obedient against facing disobedience), certain friends as sahaba and others, by contrast, as awliyat ush-shaytan (compatriots of the devil and under dark influences). I have grown to see my existence more and more in this way.
I cannot think of an area in which this would be wrong to do Islamically.[77] I do not raise anyone’s status simply because in my eyes they appear to be more “prophetic” than someone else, but definitely where they are visibly of better better [a]character and knowledge; and Islam encourages us to be around people of good character and knowledge.
It just so happens that I also root them within the stories of the Qur'an, because having deeply read and translated it, it is my favourite activity above all else. Just as someone may put their sexuality front and centre in their existence, seeing everything in those terms, so too do I take huge pleasure, ease and insight from looking at everything through a Qur'anic lens.
I mention this now so that you know that in whatever follows, my framework and basis is the understanding of the Qur'an. As the first chapter explained, that the Qur'an is not just the basis of reality for understanding, but the basis for the tool of making sense of the understanding that our senses derive from interaction with all things within scripture, the brain, the body, the nature, the cosmos and how all forms of qualia and feelings are improved with such a belief in mind.
I alluded previously to a five-day encounter with entities of the jinn world. It was not a positive experience and not one I would wish on anyone. But the toughest lessons sometimes bring about the most lasting skills and when my world was completely changed back in 2005, I found the Qur'an was the only thing which alleviated and ultimately removed the affliction, opened the doors of perception and changed the fabric of my reality for good.
In some ways, all of this explanation is to do with that moment. I have had hundreds of ethereal encounters since then, but because of the depth and power of that first interaction - unexpected and uninvited - for I have come to view the Qur'an as the ultimate in means for protection which, therefore, will be the theme of the next chapter, not in any practical sense (which goes beyond the scope of this piece of work) but as a general protection for the casual user of psychedelics from shirk.
Now we come to our main concern regarding psychedelics, formed generally through the psychedelic retreats. I have always had an interest in the jinn not merely because it's something completely within the Qur'an and therefore must be taken seriously but also because my first interaction with a jinn-like essence was one that really perturbed and distressed me for five entire days.
In my work with explaining the Qur'an to young people, I tried to make the jinn sound less like boogeyman stories and more like a part of existence that we don't see, in much the same way that we generally don't see the work of flies and mosquitoes and ants. When we do see them, we regard them with a kind of annoyance. This is not in any way to denigrate or reduce the position of the jinn within the human experience. It's just that we think about it in a very one-track way, or we don't think about it at all. It is not a bad thing not to talk about it or to investigate it, but because they can have an effect on us, just as we are all accompanied by angels and jinn - it's worth reminding ourselves of their standing. But, more importantly, I believe, from lines within the Qur'an, that the psychedelic movement is accessing this realm, unwittingly.
Although not necessarily arising from malevolent intent, in the centres where I've seen people thanking spirits for healing, it's worth reminding ourselves that healing does not come from them, but rather they are the instruments through which God brings healing to them.
The Qur'an tells us in chapter 72 that the prophet Muhammad ﷺ is told to tell his companions that {a band of jinn listened} to his recital of the Qur’an and were moved to join the faith. This insight allowed his companions to better understand the jinn as beings with free choice.
More importantly, for our purposes, it tells us that people used to call on the jinn for help in specific situations, which increased the arrogance of the jinn on the one hand, and the people's reliance on them on the other.
Jinn are creatures with free choice, made of smokeless fire,[78] who can take various forms. We may wish to think of this dramatically as “possession” but such instances, if true, are extremely rare. Entities and spirits fall under the ethereal realm in Islam, which contains angels and jinn at the very least and then subsets within each group.
We are told that every person has two recording angels (each for his good and ill-deeds), a jinn that coaxes him to ill-deeds and an angel that inspires him to good deeds[79]. Thus, there are at least four entities around every human being. While angels on the shoulder will only ever encourage good, our partner jinn can be supportive or non-supportive,[80] i.e help us towards our goal of better submission or not. [81]
Much like many mediated occurrences we hear of are where the worst of instances, told to rouse fear, anger or excitement, we hear mostly of the extremes in the jinn world in exactly the same way. But the general picture, like much of humanity, is the same, creatures going about their business.
We are told by the Prophet ﷺ that these creatures outnumber us nine to one, they are far less confined to the material nature of their beings, and they can live for thousands of years. Having said that, their interest in us human beings is likely minimal. But the subsect of them that work on the Devil's behalf will meddle, and the greatest meddling they can hope to achieve is to turn us away from God and seek assistance from things other than God. They do this by encouraging disbelief in God and believing, instead, in other creators as worthy of worship other than God, or even putting dislike, distrust and disunity between us, our families and our partners.
They run through our vascular system (i.e., they are in our blood as the prophetic tradition narrates[82]). Part of my degree was Psychology and I was always interested in that “little voice” (then conceptualised as our conscience). In a conversation, someone introduced me to the mechanism of the devil and said the devil had no physical effect on us and could not make us do anything but sometimes whispered to us in order to coax or seduce us to disobey God in particular ways.[83]
In this we find a really important way of understanding how things ingested and eaten can completely change what we see. As mentioned in a previous chapter, the processing within our visual cortex is ultimately responsible for what we see and perceive, and thus if we take things that affect our blood chemistry and thus the blood chemistry in and around the brain and visual cortex, we will see things differently and perceive things differently.
Thus the importance of prompting and framework with which you take any type of mood or perception changing and enhancing food, medicine or drug will affect how it affects you.
Let me explain in more detail. When partaking in certain psychedelic rituals, characters are introduced to go with the explanation of what is happening to people. Participants are told that these characters help with healing and are central to the process of the medicines working. We will give two examples here. The methods are not uniform across all centre facilitators, but it was prevalent in the centre that the writer attended thus worth mentioning. In the Ayahuasca ceremonies, Mother Ayahuasca was mentioned and in the San Pedro ceremony, Grandfather San Pedro was also mentioned.
Both of these archetypes were used to represent beings that could supposedly be seen by participants. In every single group setting the writer attended, participants claimed to have seen or interacted with one of these spirits or entities, thanked them, asked them for help and marvelled at their supposed powers. Shirk, clear as day.
{Certain men from among mankind used to seek refuge with certain men from among the jinn but they increased them in wickedness.} [Qur’an 72:6] They are not originating, but increasing them in wickedness that is already there. They draw to the surface impulses present and hidden in certain people. The exegetical explanations of this part of the Qur’an attest to people drawing on, relying on and having faith in the protective power of the Jinn in this instance, it is my personal belief that some are unwittingly encouraged to do the same in certain psychedelic healing settings.
The chances of this being reported without the prompting would be an interesting experiment, but I'm pretty sure it would be almost zero. People would use different frames of reference and terminology and things from different histories and cultures in order to explain the phenomena they are seeing or hearing. This is not to say that they are not perceiving something.
But more likely, from an Islamic perspective, they are seeing creatures in the blood presented to the visual cortex alongside ideas and notions that they may have taken from facilitators. We must remember, here, there is no ill intent on the part of the facilitators. The writer has even been to an Islamic-focused psychedelic retreat where a room adorned with all the names of God also contained gratitude and thanks to the powerful spirit of grandfather San Pedro. The facilitator explained in private that the reference was just a way of considering the effects of the benefits through a characterisation, but there is no way of assuring participants didn’t walk away thinking the Grandfather San Pedro was an entity or idea that assisted. Indeed in casual reference after ceremonies, participants thank and refer to the characters the facilitators and the wider reading introduced to them.
It is impossible to cover all the possibilities of what could be seen and one would lose their mind even thinking about it. But since we know that the jinn are of a gaseous nature and that they can have influence on us and that they travel in our blood, as oxygen would, I believe it is a plausible explanation and have seen it evoke both shirk and monotheism in people.
Further, I believe as Muslims, we have a vested interest in inducing more monotheism and subsequently prophetic adherence, rather than leaving people vulnerable to other frameworks which do not benefit the soul, which many do not also even realise they have.
If we are to take the idea that spirits live in the blood and if we are to take the idea that the plant medicines are ingested and thus are flowing around the body, we know that something within the introduced substance is causing people to see either into their blood or into another realm accessed by what is in their blood.
We probably have to extrapolate here just to make some connections for people. We know that our heart is beating and pumping blood around our body constantly even though we never see this happen. We also know that when we fill a person's blood with levels of alcohol, it will have a physical effect. Now most people assume that the alcohol is doing something, but rather it's the body’s response to its perceived poisoning by alcohol, that is doing something. In order to treat the poison of foreign substances that's in the body, the brain will choose to divert resources to try to soothe the pain induced from the poison. This leads to various states of light-headedness and sensory malperformance: slurring of words, not walking straight, etc. etc. The next stage of dealing with this poison by the body is to encourage urination. This is a much more direct attempt to get the poison out of the body. Lastly, when truly overwhelmed, the body reverts to vomiting to purge the foreign substance from the body. From this we can ascertain very clearly that ingested things have an effect on our blood chemistry and the brain’s natural defence to remove the intoxicating item from us.
As hopefully explained there is a process by which we know foods we take change our blood chemistry and induce certain things within us. We see this in coffee, we see it with sweets, and we see it with meat. The body has to process the things that we are taking in and their effect on us. This is no more commonly seen than with the taking of certain types of medication and the side effects that are induced.
Because the psychedelics change the frame of perception, they have to be dealt with at a higher level of understanding and tap into a wider framework.
Having seen these entities often over the last 15 years as well as many positive entities in different states, be they meditation, prayer, astral projection and dreams, the most abundant visions have come on Ayahuasca. I am not sure how many translators of the Qur'an have engaged with Ayahuasca but I can't imagine them to be many. Without going into too much detail, it suffices to say that in a psychedelic state, I observed lots of creatures present who responded to Qur'anic verses and instructions, in exactly the same way that they do without a psychedelic present.
My first experience on this particular psychedelic was an endless meeting with characters in various parts of the room and asking them again and again ‘Do you work for Allah?’ I would then proceed to talk with them only on this basis if they acknowledge that they knew Allah was true. At the end of my first evening, the entity known as Mother Ayahuasca appeared and she had some frustration at my presence. However, when asked if she too worked for Allah, she replied in the affirmative. Every time I have met since she has been more and more welcoming and more importantly she has uttered and alhamdulilah, ‘thanks be to God’ with me.[b]
In short, all my psychedelic experiences happen within an islamic framework and I believe, where applied and used, it would be pertinent for others to step towards it with an Islamic framework.
We've tried to take you on some kind of journey of understanding from an Islamic perspective and though we may have failed in many instances, I hope you gather the idea that Islamically, we are trying to return our souls to our Lord using whatever tools are available to us to improve our ability to perform and uphold that Covenant.
I have tried to outline the Islamic perspective, sources and those areas of alignment with other religious traditions. We have also tried to ascertain a way in which the jinn work within the human realm.
Of all the things that I have written about in the last few chapters, I know this will be one of the most contentious, though I believe it, even if not verifiable. The framework fits and just because the opportunity to explore it has not yet been explored before does not mean it is therefore something that should be dismissed. Buddhist and Shinto religion are replete with forces being just as much a part of our existence, but they incorporate it fully and respectfully into their day to day, but we have forgotten it and assumed a material existence.
Muslims are and will be using psychedelics to try and better understand many areas of their lives and to place them as part of creation in an Islamic framework with guardrails is extremely important.
I have spoken of instances and interactions in as objective a way as I can from an Islamic viewpoint. But further, in conversation with entities that I have spoken to in all altered states, I ask them what they are doing, where they are from, and who they work for. I have not noted them here, thought of huge interest in the same way stories of mystics are used in many traditions.
Some of that has given me pause for thought and extrapolated some core Islamic notions and ideas into the work you see before you even if some of those influences are not mentioned, but they drove me to find references that supported it from the Qur’an and it was no surprise to find such information there. Again this has been a reality for me without any psychedelic. I merely reference this because many will be tricked in that realm.
I’m reminded of the story of the Rabbis who entered transcendence by using the names of God in Hebrew (a form of Zikr):
‘The criterion of the authentic and Kabbalistic journey is one that comes full circle and where one returns ultimately to the world of the here-and-now. The Talmud tells of four sages who entered the mystical orchard and experienced a transcendental experience. Ben Azzai gazed and died. Ben Zoma gazed and was stricken. In other words, he went insane. Acher (the other) (née Elisha Ben Avuyah) gazed and cut off his plantings, that is, transmogrified into a heretic. Rabbi Akiva entered and exited in peace. The orchard represents the higher spiritual realms.
Rabbi Akiva was the only sage, amongst these four great sages, who was able to enter and exit the mystical orchard without being scarred. Being a man of great spiritual stature, a true and well-balanced master, he realised that the objective is not to identify with the light and not return, physically, as Ben Azzai did, or mentally as Ben Zoma did. Nor was it to feel personal release or ecstasy, but rather to go there and return here, with the proper wisdom to serve in the here-and-now. The journey is to come full circle into one's day-to-day life behaviours.’[84]
Many who engage with psychedelics, will fall prey to lost understandings that guide towards shirk, doom and loss, but for the general population, low-dosage psychedelic use has easily measurable benefits and does not have the side effects that certain medicines or antidepressants with equivalent claims of mood enhancement have.
However, the desire to explore and to push oneself into a realm and space of being influenced leaves one prey and open to the effects of Jinn and thus we are confronted again with the same notions mentioned in chapter 72 of the Qur'an and the fulfilment of Iblis, Satan, The Devil’s promise to lead many of us astray.
He need not do that by sending us on violent rampages but simply to hold that something other than Allah gives us benefit. Though shirk is not often discussed or attuned to in conversation, I'm reminded of the line from the film The Usual Suspects itself a paraphrase from a much older piece of work ‘the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't exist’ within the Islamic framework the character and the archetype of the devil; those that follow him; those that are spawned by him are as important to be wary of as any prophetic story or prophetic understanding.
I hope the work above has aligned some of our traditions for understanding our reality as souls and given a framework by which we can start to set guardrails for the safe and unsafe parameters of using psychedelics as we respond with the changes of law in different societies and communities.
The Islamic approach to this will never be ahead of the curve simply because their areas [c]where there is no funding and there is no acutely known need, but if leaders were more aware of how much elicit alcohol illicit substances all of which are chemically formed I used[d] by the common Muslims in less cosmopolitan areas, they would throw as much as this as they do trying to bring sporting events to the Middle East.
I'm sadly reminded of the many times in which I set our parents’ evening as a teacher and had a parent spew off what they thought of their child while the child sat instead of me begging me not to reveal the true nature of their character. Just like these well-meaning but unaware parents, many Muslim leaders do not have an idea of the perma-struggle that Muslims find themselves in. It is a sad reality that in America, research seems to indicate that the groups that consider suicide most is the Islamic one.
8% of Muslims reportedly acknowledged having suicidal thoughts as compared to 5% in other religious communities and Society as a whole.[85] This is all the more surprising considering the flexibility, shrewdness and power of our law and law creation while adhering to our traditions and allowing us to do things that benefit people. I remember once being taught that there was revelation from which we derive rulings, from which we applied to a reality, and in the reality in which we live, a cheap and edifying framework and substance that is freely available could make a huge difference to millions of Muslims worldwide.
Even as I write this in the hope that someone somewhere pays attention, I suppose I am consumed and resigned to the fact we will only be interested once the West and the Non-Muslims tell us ‘it's okay’. I would have loved to have lived in a time where it was not like that and we put the needs of our community first before we change our approaches to things.
Still, with God is every success, God knows best and God is best.
No matter, because we follow in submission and a beautiful example of submission can be found in trees:
The forest is a family. First to grow the fastest trees. We see the Silver Birches strive towards the sky in a handful of years. Beneath them in the shelter they provide sapling hardwoods, the Oak that may have been blown to the ground is not because of the Silver Birch brother providing that protection. Slowly grows the woodland around them. The Oaks maturing as the Silver Birch declines. Thus each tree has a three-part life with each part equal in duration and contribution to the wider family of the forest.
The first phase is the race for the clouds to establish and find a place. Next comes the thriving, thrusting and the time of matured accomplishment, the time of majesty and the time of protection. The final third is the decline.
The tree steadily falls apart but this is done with grace to drop a branch and feed the forest floor allowing other trees and plants to feed on its nourishment. This continues until the trunk itself falls, feeds the upcoming saplings as they grow, who will then one day thrive until they too will fall apart and give back so generously.
Hope some of our lessons and intentions imitate the above. We leave something for those after us to do what is to follow better.
What follows is a crumb of an explanation of how our reality comes into existence. It is included after feedback from non-Muslim readers who wanted a contextual grounding.
There is no debate in it for Muslims familiar with the Islam of the chain of scholars. As a general rule when thinking about Islam, imagine 90% of Muslim people being right about 90% of the Islamic stuff, 90% of the time. Not everyone who calls themself Muslim is, nor will they know the chronology or their place in it.
Muslims who say they are an incarnation of Jesus or believe they have the right to kill other Muslims at will would be outside of the vast, vast majority of Muslims. We hope such people receive guidance to rectify their thinking, as it would generally be considered outside the fold of Islam. Why? Because we have books that mandate who Jesus was, what he looked like, what happened to him, etc. etc. So it can’t be you or your friend Sammy from down the road.
You may ask ‘how do you know this?’ Well Muslims BELIEVE in God, His Angels, His Books, His Prophets & Messengers, Judgement Day and fate of all beings are known to Him.
On a practical level this means: we believe God sent angels to messengers with books, with instructions on why you're here, how all we do will be accounted for on Judgement Day and that all things are known to Him. This includes you, the reader, and Jesus, but also every ant, cat, dinosaur, planet, etc. etc.
So what do those books say of our existence? Well we could make a trillion points here, but we’ll elucidate a timeline, for the unfamiliar reader to get a basic grasp of how God instructs Muslims to see everything, but our focus will be on relevance to humans. Remember, Muslim here is ALL HUMANS who submit, throughout time.
Muslims don’t follow (or should not follow) Greek, Kantian or Smithonian logic, we follow Qur’anic logic primarily, so all are invited to get to grips with that. Essentially the Qur’an is NOT a human centric endeavour. It does not start with the Prophet Mohammed ﷺ - it is released in its most perfected state through Prophet Muhammad ﷺ , culminating in the expression of the word of God in the Arabic language, but that is much more the crescendo of our existence, rather than the starting point. Qur’an means ‘reading’ or ‘instruction’ or ‘guidance’, depending on the linguistic starting point you wish to adhere to, but most importantly for our understanding, it was not the first.
There were many scriptures from God before. The Qur’an mentions them by name, the Torah and Injeel and Zabur. We need not associate them with the common texts commonly called the Old Testament, New Testament and Psalms. These things are not the same at all, though they may have traces of the originals in them. In total, it is likely there were some 313 revelations descended from us, but we will focus on the aforementioned ones for now.
The three ‘readings’ as they came to their Prophets in their time, would have been the things the Qur’an is referring to, the modern artefacts that can be read and associated with Judaism and Christianity are NOT what the Qur'an is referring to.
The Torah that the Jews at the time of the Prophet had, can be argued to MAY have had parts of the true Torah with them. Each instance where it is mentioned must be reviewed against the instance of revelation it was revealed.
The point hardly needs stressing that whatever Jesus brought was not what the modern bible is. The Roman Catholic Bible has 73 books, the Protestant Bible has 66, The Orthodox Tewahedo Bible, or at least its cannon, contains 81 books.
Whatever the Injeel was (and we do not need to refer to it as ‘Gospel’ as even that word does not find much to justify its use, as noted by Christian academics) we assume it was a ‘Reading’ lost to us.
As ever with our Jewish brethren, their allocation of Scripture is easier to align. Torah has a root which means: ‘proclamation’ or ‘instruction’, which is taken to mean the guidance. Our interest here is the idea of proclaiming something that is said to benefit human bodies carrying souls which are on a journey back to their Lord.
The other reading the Qur’an mentions is the Zabur. Many trained by western reasoning assume that the Zabur is a ‘book’. In the first instance, forgetting that the Qur’an refers to itself as a book, (for those accessing it that way, in its complete form, the Qur’an is formed for beholding for humans in a book called the ‘mushaf’), and the Zabur must be treated the same way, and Eternal word of God, that is documented for a time in a book.
All of them would have been an auditory experience before a read one.
You may be wondering right now what this has to do with psychedelics, but before we get into the specifics of creation, we have to talk about the vehicles of creation.
We do not assume at the time of writing, ANY of the 3 above mentioned items exist in uncorrupted form, so we need only refer to them as True to their own Prophets and their followers. What we have is not them, and any passing notion mentioned in them that aligns with the Qur’an is a benefit for them. We need not associate or compare, as if we attribute a meaning or likeness to a verse therein, we may be pleased with it, but if their scholars change or edit the books, remove lines, add lines, as they have done, we may end up having told Muslims of a position that will not hold eternal as the Qur’an will. So we encourage only effort towards Qur’anic understanding. We do this with all things and our treatment of psychedelics will be no different.
The current Qur’an has come to us from pre-creation, in a way no other thing we have in its complete form does. Other scriptures do exist, in their perfect form, but are not reachable within the settled sphere of existence we understand in human perceived time and space (souls in vehicles of matter). It comes from the same realm as the soul, before our existence.
So let us look at the Qur’an in detail, remembering the beloved prophet Muhammad ﷺ said: “The superiority of the Speech of God over other speeches is like the superiority of God over His creatures.”[86]
So all other speech, scripture, songs, wisdom etc. etc. doesn’t compare to the Qur’an as it is eternal, and it is carrying the words that manifest the creation you are part of, as we shall see.
In its most limiting sense, Qur’an means ‘readings,’ ‘the reading’ , and ‘that which is said’, so the logical follow through would be akin to: ‘the words.’
The singular is ‘Iqra’ ‘what is read’, where the logical follow through is ‘read the words’. So in Arabic ‘Iqra al Qur'an’ can be many things: Read the Readings, Read that which is said, read the words - the difference Islamically is negligible.
The words it refers to are to be conveyed or heard with human senses, they are the eternal word of God. The Qur’an’s introduction to human senses, in vehicles known as bodies, in the realm we see within the visible light spectrum during our existence on ‘earth’, came through the Angel Gabriel, Allah’s trusted angelic messenger throughout time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirk_(Islam)
[2] Muslim teaching holds that 124,000 prophets have been sent the world over since the beginning of the human story, 27 of whom are explicitly named. Though not in the canonical list, later Muslim theologians made creative speculations that Buddha, in his original teachings, might well have been a prophet. For a survey of this tradition see: Ahmad Faizuddin Ramli; Jaffary Awang; Zaizul Ab Rahman (2018), ‘Muslim scholar's discourse on Buddhism: a literature on Buddha's position’ in: International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences (ICHSS 2018). SHS Web of Conferences. Vol. 53, no. 4001
[3] https://www.rhymingQur'an.com/
[4] https://www.npr.org/2021/08/10/1025430083/muslims-suicide-attempts-study-religion-american
[5] Hadith: Bukhari, sahih
[6] Qur’an 93:11
[7] {Every soul will taste death and you will be paid in full only on the Day of Resurrection. Whoever is kept away from the Fire and admitted to the Garden will have triumphed. The present world is only an illusory pleasure} [3:185]
[8] {Did you think We had created you in vain, and that you would not be brought back to Us?’} (23:115]
[9] Meaning ‘remembrance’, refers to ’Muslim meditative practices and incantations that are intended to awaken the heart to the divine presence.
[10] {Praise be to God, who sent down the Scripture to His servant and made it unerringly straight} [18:1]
[11] Sawai, M. (2014).The divine names in Ibn 'Arabi's theory of oneness of existence [Master's Thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain.
[12] Hadith: Bukhari, sahih
[13] Qatadah reported: I said to Aisha, “O mother of the believers, tell me about the character of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.” Aisha said, “Have you not read the Qur'an?” I said, “Of course.” Aisha said, “Verily, the character of the Prophet of Allah was the Qur'an.” [Hadith: Muslim, sahih]
[14] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2006/05/22/how-and-why-muhammad-made-a-difference/
[15] Called a mus-haf
[16] https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/341356/drawing-circle-around-oneself-does-not-protect-against-jinn
[17] https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadithonline/2019/09/24/prophet-miracle-abu-huraira/
[18] https://aboutislam.net/counseling/ask-about-islam/muhammad-often-visit-cave-hira/
[19] https://hadeethenc.com/en/browse/hadith/10840
[20] https://sunnah.com/bukhari:741
[21] https://zamzam.com/blog/battle-of-trench/
[22] https://hadithcollection.com/sahihmuslim/sahih-muslim-book-04-prayer/sahih-muslim-book-004-hadith-number-1106
[23] https://hadithcollection.com/sahihbukhari/sahih-bukhari-book-58-merits-of-the-helpers-in-madina-ansaar/sahih-bukhari-volume-005-book-058-hadith-number-227
[24] https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/members/sigs/spirituality-spsig/heart-mind-and-spirit-mohamed-salem.pdf?sfvrsn=207f7229_2
[25] Glassé, C., The New Encyclopedia of Islam (2001), p. 337
[26] The Prophet ﷺ said: “The pen has been lifted from three; for the sleeping person until he awakens, for the boy until he becomes a young man and for the mentally insane until he regains sanity.”
[27] {He who has created all things in the best possible way. He commenced the creation of man from clay… and breathed His spirit (ruh) into him and gave you hearing, sight and hearts} [32:7-9] Drawing on a large body of hadith and commentaries from the Companions, the mediaeval Qur’anic commentator As-Samarqandi, summarises it this way: “When God, Most High desired to animate Adam to life (upon whom be peace), He commanded the spirit to enter at his mouth... When the spirit reached his ears, Adam could hear the praises of the angels. When it came to rest at his nose, he sneezed... [and when] the spirit came to his mouth and tongue God imbued him with [uttering] the praise of God… [and when] it reached down to his abdomen, he felt the desire for food.” [Kitab Haqa'iq wad-Daqa'iq, translated excerpts in: J. Macdonald, ‘The creation of man and angels in the eschatological literature’, in Islamic Studies, iii (1964), p. 297] Thus, the ruh is that element of the human composite which gives life to the clay, the body, our physical matter, such that the ears can hear, the mouth can speak, the eyes can see and so on.
[28] {We offered the Trust to the heavens, the earth, and the mountains, yet they refused to undertake it and were afraid of it; mankind undertook it - they have always been inept and foolish} [33:72]
[29] {When your Lord took out the offspring from the loins of the Children of Adam and made them bear witness about themselves, He said, ‘Am I not your Lord?’ and they replied, ‘Yes, we bear witness.’ So you cannot say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘We were not aware of this.’} [7:172]
[30] This was a view unanimously held by the earliest Qur’anic commentators. Here, for instance, is Ibn Abbas: “Those unbelievers whom We destroyed would not have iman, when the Messengers were sent, regarding what they lied about before on the Day the Covenant was taken, when they were extracted from Adam’s back. They affirmed with their tongues but internally denied it [fa-aqarru bil-lisān wa-aḍmarūt-takdhiba].” [Tafsīr Al-Baghawī, sura 7:101-2] Man’s choice to believe or disbelieve in Him at the moment was an anticipation of a choice we would make in this life and hence a window into God’s eternal knowledge of the condition of every soul.
[33] {But Satan made them slip, and removed them from the state they were in. We said, ‘Get out, all of you! You are each other’s enemy. On earth you will have a place to stay and livelihood for a time.’} [2:36]
[34] The Prophet ﷺ said: “Each one of you is constituted in the womb of the mother for forty days, and then he becomes a clot of thick blood for a similar period, and then a piece of flesh for a similar period.” [Hadith: Bukhari, sahih]
[35] {His [evil] companion will say, ‘Lord, I did not make him transgress; he had already gone far astray himself.’ God will say, ‘Do not argue in My presence. I sent you a warning and My word cannot be changed: I am not unjust to any creature.’} 50:27-29
[36] {Whoever has done an atom’s-weight of good will see it} 99:7
[37] {On that Day, people will come forward in separate groups to be shown their deeds} [99:6]
[38] The Prophet ﷺ said:“I was sent to perfect good character.” [Hadith: Al-Adab Al-Mufrad, sahih]
[39] Qur'an 19:29-34
[40] https://www.dawateislami.net/magazine/en/keep-your-(righteous)-predecessors-remembered/sheikh-abdul-qadir-jilani
[41] https://islamqa.info/en/answers/2593/why-so-many-earthquakes
[42] The Prophet ﷺ said: “The Hour [of Judgment] will not come to pass until time passes rapidly, such that a year is like a month, a month is like a week, a week is like a day, a day is like an hour, and an hour is like the flicker of a flame.” [Hadith: at-Tirmidhī, sahih]
[43] Hadith: Musnad Ahmad, v.45, p.252
[44] Kaneda, T. and Haub C., ‘How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?’
[45] https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/kabbalah/section4/
[46] https://www.chabad.org/kabbalah/article_cdo/aid/380714/jewish/Contemplative-and-Practical-Kabbalah.htm
[47] https://sunnah.com/search?q=truffles
[48] Hadith: Bukhari, sahih
[49] Abu Nu'aym Al-Isfahani, At-Tib un-Nabawi, p. 620
[50] Tafsir Ibn Kathir, sura 2:213
[51] The Prophet ﷺ said: “Actions are but by intentions, and each person will have but that which he intended.” [Hadith: An-Nasa'i, sahih]
[52] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/01/us-beekeepers-sue-over-imports-of-asian-fake-honey#:~:text=The%20class%2Daction%20lawsuit%20aims,profits%20over%20the%20past%20decade.
[53] https://islamqa.org/hanafi/hadithanswers/120782/washing-the-hands-before-eating/
[54] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashf
[55] https://sunnah.com/bukhari:6439
[56] https://shroomcircle.com/en/magic-mushrooms-the-heroic-dose/
[57] https://acsauhaya.org/
[58] In the original teaching he referred to people being moulded into a “Christian”, “Jew” and so on, but these are simply examples of adyan, ‘religions’, which, in Muslim belief, extends beyond formal doctrinal categories to include any paradigms of belief and ideals, including “modernity” or “scientism”, for instance.
[59] https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3303
[60] https://sunnah.com/muslim/48/112
[61] https://share.upmc.com/2019/01/screen-time/
[62] https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=27&verse=88
[63] https://quran.com/en/24:24/tafsirs/en-tafsir-maarif-ul-quran
[64] Sapo in My Soul by the late Peter Gorman provides many encounters worth a read, but this specificity is one of the real marvels of the book.
[65] Catlow, B. J., Song, S., & Paredes, D. A. (2019). Effects of psilocybin on hippocampal neurogenesis and extinction of trace fear conditioning. Experimental Brain Research, 237(5), 1209-1217.
[66] Carhart-Harris, R. L., Bolstridge, M., Rucker, J., Day, C. M., Erritzoe, D., Kaelen, M., ... & Nutt, D. J. (2016). Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression: an open-label feasibility study. The Lancet Psychiatry, 3(7), 619-627
[67] Fadiman, J., & Korb, S. (2019). The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys. Simon and Schuster.
[68] Hutten, N. R., Mason, N. L., Dolder, P. C., & Kuypers, K. P. (2019). Motives and side-effects of microdosing with psychedelics among users. International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 22(7), 426-434.
[69] Smigielski, L., Kometer, M., Scheidegger, M., Krähenmann, R., Huber, T., & Vollenweider, F. X. (2019). Characterization and prediction of acute and sustained response to psychedelic psilocybin in a mindfulness group retreat. Scientific Reports, 9(1),
[70] Vollenweider, F. X., & Kometer, M. (2010). The neurobiology of psychedelic drugs: implications for the treatment of mood disorders. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(9), 642-651
[71] Carhart-Harris, R. L., et al. (2016). Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(17), 4853-4858.
[72] Kometer, M., et al. (2012). Increased self-reported visual imagery vividness in individuals with higher trait dissociation scores. Acta Psychologica, 141(3), 301-306.
[73] Nichols, D. E. (2016). Psychedelics. Pharmacological Reviews, 68(2), 264-355
[74] Luke, D. P. (2012). Psychedelic transpersonal psychotherapy: A neurobiological model of the effects of psychedelics. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 44(4), 297-306
[75] Preller, K. H., et al. (2017). The Fabric of Meaning and Subjective Effects in LSD-Induced States Depend on Serotonin 2A Receptor Activation. Current Biology, 27(3), 451-457
[76] Qur’an 36:33
[77] Ibn Mas’ud used to resemble the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in his guidance, conduct, and character. ‘Alqamah used to resemble Ibn Mas’ud in these things. Ibrahim used to resemble ‘Alqama, Mansoor used to resemble Ibrahim, Sufyan used to resemble Mansoor, Wakee’ used to resemble Sufyan, Ahmad used to resemble Wakee’, and Abu Dawud used to resemble Ahmad bin Hanbal” (Al-Bidayah wa Al-Nihayah 14/618). The archetype is embodied by those who embody the sunna (guidance, conduct character)
[78] https://quran.com/en/al-hijr/26-27
[79] https://lifewithallah.com/articles/knowing-allah/in-the-company-of-angels/
[80] https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadithonline/2014/04/20/shaytan-satan-qareen-whispering/
[81] https://muslimconverts.com/ruqyah/jinn_companion.htm
[82] https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadithonline/2012/09/12/shaytan-run-people-blood/
[83] https://www.siasat.com/whispering-devils-weapon-i-1469050/
[84] https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/170308/jewish/What-is-Kabbalah.htm
[85] https://www.npr.org/2021/08/10/1025430083/muslims-suicide-attempts-study-religion-american
[86] Hadith: At-Tirmidhi, hasan
[a]@leonisjames@googlemail.com Sir, should I remove the extra 'better'?
_Assigned to leonisjames@googlemail.com_
[b]@leonisjames@googlemail.com Sir, should this be "Ever since I met her, she has been more and more welcoming, and more importantly, she has uttered alhamdulilah, 'thanks be to God' with me."?
_Assigned to leonisjames@googlemail.com_
[c]@leonisjames@googlemail.com Sir, should this be 'there are areas'?
_Assigned to leonisjames@googlemail.com_
[d]@leonisjames@googlemail.com Sir, should this be 'are used'?
_Assigned to leonisjames@googlemail.com_
[e]@leonisjames@googlemail.com Sir, should this be 'driving a car or taking psychedelics'?
_Assigned to leonisjames@googlemail.com_