The use of medicines for spiritual awakening and inner healing goes back for thousands of years to prehistoric times. Some indigenous peoples continue to use them in unbroken traditions. However, most of the old traditions have been lost. Perhaps the first historical records of spiritual medicines are from ancient India, with the drinking of soma in religious ceremony to connect with the immortal Spirit and purify the soul.

Spiritual medicines were used for two thousand years at the Temple of Eleusis (circa 1400 BCE to 400 CE) in Ancient Greece. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates shares his experience of being initiated by a woman into the “Greater Mysteries”, where he was taken to the realm of Eternal Beauty, the everlasting cause of all and the supreme being of love. The Roman statesman, Marcus Cicero, credited Eleusis for bringing humanity from a barbaric life to a civilized life. Eleusis provided a platform for higher spiritual energy to enter into the Greek culture, facilitating the flowering of philosophy, science, and art, which formed the foundations of western civilization.

Around the same time period, the mescaline containing San Pedro cactus was used in ceremony at the Jaguar Temple of Chavin, Peru, the ”Andean Eleusis". As brilliantly argued by Brian Muruesku, in The Immortality Key, there is reason to believe that the early Christians borrowed from the Greek tradition and used spiritual medicines as their holy sacrament in the Eucharist.
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In The Road To Eleusis, by Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl Ruck, first published in 1978, Hoffman envisioned “Eleusis-like" spiritual healing centers throughout the world. Humanity is now in the infant stage of creating such healing centers. By the end of this decade, it very possible that such centers will populate the entire world, infusing humanity with spiritual energy and spurring global transformation.