Reply #4: There might be

[indigobusiness]

a bit more to the topic than you outline.

I'm not advocating anything, especially picking and eating wild mushrooms, but this is a much deeper and interesting issue than you give it credit.

http://www.egodeath.com/index.html

This Egodeath theory presents a rational, systematic model of religious experiencing based on loose cognitive association, experiencing no-free-will and its transcendence, and timeless block-universe determinism.

Includes:

o The entheogenic trans-determinism theory of religion

o The maximal entheogen theory of religion

o The entheogenic theory of myth, perennial philosophy, and esotericism

-- Michael Hoffman

http://www.egodeath.com -- simple theory of the ego-death and rebirth experience. The essence, paradigm, origin, and fountainhead of religion is the use of visionary plants to routinely trigger the intense mystic altered state, producing loose cognitive association binding, which then produces an experience of frozen block-universe determinism with a single, pre-existing, ever-existing future. The return of the ordinary state of consciousness is allegorized as a transcendence of Necessity or cosmic determinism. Myth describes this mystic-state experience. Initiation is classically a series of some 8 visionary-plant sessions, interspersed with study of perennial philosophy. Most religion is a distortion, corruption, literalization, and cooptation of this standard initiation system.

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Tomothy Freke's work is particularly fascinating.

http://www.egodeath.com/frekeenthnofreewill.htm