Pantheism – All is God – is the hidden doctrine behind many reported psychedelic-occasioned experiences, both in the literature and in clinical trials, yet its meaning is little understood in the clinical and therapeutic spheres. This essay therefore seeks to remedy this deficit by offering a fresh outline of Pantheism via the exploration of its etymology and history, the meanings of pan/all...
It is proposed that the term ‘psychedelics’, used for a certain class of psychoactive substances, be replaced by our new term 'psychosomadelics'. In our view, this step is necessary because the term 'psychedelics' is psychocentric (i.e. focusing primarily on the effects on the mind) and therefore neglects the somatic (bodily) effects of these substances. This is of particular importance as...
AbstractPeter Sjöstedt-Hughes attempts to help us understand psychedelic experience via the ideas of Aldous Huxley and Henri Bergson. More specifically, he attempts ‘to rectify and fortify’ Bergson’s metaphysics as it is represented in Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, a book about the use and experience of mescaline. In it, Huxley employs two Bergsonian concepts: that of the ‘reducing...
The essential proposal of this text is that psychedelic-induced metaphysical experiences should be integrated and evaluated with recourse to metaphysics. It will be argued that there is a potential extra benefit to patients in psychedelic-assisted therapy if they are provided with an optional, additional, and intelligible schema and discussion of metaphysical options at the integrative phase of...
Indigenous psychedelic uses have long been imbricated with colonialism and its afterlives. Amidst tensions from accelerating investor interest in psychedelics and calls to decolonize research and practices, we argue that the study of psychedelics is troubled by dualisms used in both colonial and decolonial thought: subject and object, self and other, culture and nature, synthetic and natural,...
Experiences of enlightened unity with Nature or with Deity are reported not only in the mystical literature of the past but also in contemporary accounts of the psychedelic adventurer. In Chapter 13, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes seeks to fathom such reported states within the framework of the metaphysics of Benedict de Spinoza – a metaphysics encompassing monism, pantheism, panpsychism, and the...