When I was in high school, I was on the cross country team. As a result, on one meet day I experienced the "runner's high", an experience of endorphin that uses the same receptors as opium. I felt like I was riding in my body as though it were a carriage, and that I could run all the way home. Since then I have suspected that the ancient Greek philosophers had similar experiences from their physical exercises, and that is the source of their ideas about the soul surviving the body.
When I was in high school, I was on the cross country team. As a result, on one meet day I experienced the "runner's high", an experience of endorphin that uses the same receptors as opium. I felt like I was riding in my body as though it were a carriage, and that I could run all the way home. Since then I have suspected that the ancient Greek philosophers had similar experiences from their physical exercises, and that is the source of their ideas about the soul surviving the body.
Chris, you raise a good point, as always: psychedelic drugs are only one among many ways to achieve transcendence.