One cannot discuss religion without addressing the question of faith. Though many regard faith to be a simple statement of belief, I often encounter a stronger religious attitude, one of faith for faith's sake - that if one believes in something strongly enough it will become true. Positive thinking. Affirmations. To change the world one simply has to have a strong enough faith. This attitude is possibly the essence of fundamentalism, where the personal battle of the fundamentalist is to demonstrate to themselves, to others and to their deities, the strength of their faith in order that they may facilitate the promise of their religion.

The danger of this attitude is illustrated in the legacy of St Augustine, who propounded that only faith could create his "City of God", and that the real test of one's faith came when it conflicted with reason. It was the Church's acceptance of this proposition that blinded Europe to the Greek legacy of reason and enveloped Europe in an intellectual darkness that persisted for some 1200 years.

More recently, I have encountered this propensity to act on faith alone within the depths of a psychedelic experience, when the newly perceived extents of connectivity so overwhelm one's habitual architective consciousness that one is willing to discount architectivity entirely. Wrapped in a purely connective consciousness, one's mind appears to be able to shape material reality, which carries an implication that the reality one experiences is dependent on where one's faith is directed, and is so at all times, not only when under a psychedelic influence. One may be inclined to test that prospect dramatically - with possibly catastrophic consequences - or one may spend years attempting to perfect one's faith.

Just as it is necessary to remember that it is only connective reality responding to the apprehension of one's mind in the psychedelic state, it is only connective reality that can be responsive to any corresponding faith - and then only if one's faith happens to coincide with the intent of the Cosmic Deity - which can at best be momentary while a faith tends to be static. Even in the psychedelic state of mind such power of faith is extremely limited, and in a normal state of mind it is even more unlikely.

I do not discount faith but I am wary of it being consciously expressed. It often happens that, where there is uncertainty, or where our knowledge of the terrain is poor, an intuition, a "leap of faith", shows the way forward. However, reason must remain the dominant means of evaluation in one's normal state of mind and should continue to be valued in the psychedelically enhanced state - without letting its habitual invocation be a barrier to experiences of holistic apprehension.

Testing one's faith in one's personal and social capacities is of immense value, but testing the law of gravity is not. When one's inclination is to act on faith alone, especially in the context of a psychedelic session, it is prudent to test reason gently at first rather than crashing through blindly.

When one's consciousness is firmly entrenched in one mode, faith in that mode could be seen to be of greater value than good sense in the other. I have suggested prudently recognizing the value of both modes when negotiating both psychedelic and normal states of mind. But our unimodal deities are not capable of valuing both modes. Their sentiences are entrenched in only one mode and are incapable of understanding their opposite mode. Actions they may suggest to us are likely to discount if not ignore meaning outside their own mode.

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