Psychedelics and naturalistic spirituality

Spirituality requires learning, accepting, and adapting to ultimate reality. Psychedelic experiences can facilitate this, but only through interpretations that connect them to ultimate reality. This chapter evaluates three interpretations from a naturalist perspective. The religious interpretation, which claims psychedelics reveal non-natural spirits, is deemed false by naturalists and offers no genuine spiritual benefits. The physicalistic naturalist interpretation has strong scientific support but likely fails to account for important spiritual aspects of psychedelic experiences. The Platonic naturalist interpretation has good scientific support and accounts for all spiritual aspects. The chapter cautions that psychedelic spirituality requires metaphysical pluralism.

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Abstract

Abstract Spirituality at least requires learning, accepting, and adapting to ultimate reality. Although psychedelic experiences are thought to facilitate these aspects of spirituality, those experiences are only related to ultimate reality by way of interpretations. This chapter uses naturalism to evaluate three interpretations. The first interpretation, which is religious, says that psychedelic experiences reveal a world of non-natural spirits. For naturalists, this interpretation is false, and provides no genuine spiritual benefits. The second interpretation involves physicalistic naturalism. Although it has excellent scientific support, it probably cannot account for some important spiritual aspects of psychedelic experiences. The third interpretation involves Platonic naturalism. It has good scientific support, and accounts for all the spiritual aspects of psychedelic experiences. But the chapter ends with a word of caution: psychedelic spirituality demands metaphysical pluralism.