Beatific vision[Drugs are often seen as a short route to knowing God because of the common experiences of gaining secret knowledge and new perspectives, and of seeing (illusory or not), or otherwise experiencing God or spirit. The Eleusinian Mysteries, referenced below, included a drink called kykeon, which is thought to have been psychedelic, although there is no real evidence for that beyond the reputed efficacy of the experience and the use of (possibly ergot-contaminated) grain. Whether or not the drug experience really does bring one closer to God (if He is there) is moot, since the subjective experience is real. Apart from the risk to the physical body of ingesting some drugs, Western civilisation joins the esoteric practices which devote time and effort to communing with God in condemning shortcuts such as drug use as false and dangerous in that participants are unprepared for the experience and don’t know what to do with it once they have it.]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“In Christian theology, the beatific vision is the ultimate direct self communication of God to the individual person. A person possessing the beatific vision reaches, as a member of redeemed humanity in the communion of saints, perfect salvation in its entirety, i.e. heaven. The notion of vision stresses the intellectual component of salvation, though it encompasses the whole of human experience of joy, happiness coming from seeing God finally face to face and not imperfectly through faith. (1 Cor 13:11–12)1It is related to the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief in theosis [becoming God-like.2], and is seen in most – if not all – church denominations as the reward for Christians in the afterlife.Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatific_vision> ‘In the Eleusinian MysteriesSocrates’ mystic vision of initiation from Plato’s Phaedrus.“There was a time when with the rest of the happy band they saw beauty shining in brightness – we philosophers following in the train of Zeus, others in company with other gods; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light.” Phaedrus:250′Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatific_vision>
- “11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” [↩]
- Does Faust undergo false theosis? [↩]