Psychedelics and Supernatural Agents

Abstract

Abstract The authors review the evidence for overlap in neurophysiologic, cognitive, and phenomenological features of REM sleep dreams and the psychedelic state. REM sleep and dreams contribute in complex ways to the phenomenology of both religious experiences and psychedelic experiences via intrusion of components of REM neurophysiology into waking consciousness or the psychedelic state. The cognitive and neurophysiologic factors that predict the appearance of supernatural agents (SAs) in dreams and in the psychedelic state appear to involve in both cases down-regulation of default mode network (DMN) and the associated impairment in the cognitive self-model in dreams or ego dissolution in the psychedelic state. The authors hypothesize that SAs emerge both in the dream and the psychedelic state in order to explain away or resolve uncertainties around impairment in the self-model.