“...used psychoactive substances like ayahuasca to commune with otherworldly beings, from whom they claim to receive secret knowledge about the universe”
~~~
Secret knowledge. Riiiight. *face palm*
When I was younger I might have experimented with something like this. Personally I don’t think there is anything “supernatural” about it. It’s all neurochemistry and neurology and turning off or stimulating parts of the brain that normally aren’t.
However, I think it’s silly to assign significance to it, or worse, take it as some sort of truth. These people are secular, so I wouldn’t expect them to heed this, but I’m quite sure that if God wanted to communicate with you, God knows how to look you up. So what you are ‘communing’ with is risky, at best.
But even if these were just “otherworldly beings” in a purely secular or scientific sense, why would you assume that they are beneficent, or going to offer you something for nothing?
“ Personally I don’t think there is anything “supernatural” about it.”
You’re right, it’s neurochemistry.
But human beings are spiritual creatures and all our experiences and thoughts (which occur via our neurochemistry) are filtered through our spiritual nature and any discombobulation of our neurochemistry will discombobulate our spiritual understanding.
“Secret knowledge. Riiiight. *face palm*”
In shamanistic cultures with all of their ‘secret knowledge’ life remained “solitary, nasty, brutish and short’. The shamans never pointed out useful and simple things like to prevent typhus and dysentery, among other things, all one had to do is boil water.