Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin are under investigation for the treatment of several psychiatric conditions. They also have the remarkable property of producing persisting positive psychological changes in healthy volunteers for at least several months. In this study, 35 medium-high doses of psilocybin were administered to 28 healthy volunteers (12 females). By the end of the dosing day,...
A growing proportion of the population is engaging in recreational psychedelic use. Psychedelics are uniquely capable of reliably occasioning mystical experiences in ordinary humans without contemplative or religious backgrounds. While clinical research has made efforts to characterize psychedelic experiences, comparably little is understood about how humans naturalistically engage with...
William James proposed in 1902 that states of mystical experience, central to his idea of religious experience, can be identified based on their ineffability and their noetic quality. The epistemological category of the noetic quality, modified by W. T. Stace in 1960, plays a central but somewhat confounding role in today’s biomedical research involving psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and...
ManuscriptNovember 20, 2021Mark Vladimirovich Shugurov, Olga Viktorovna Kostina
The paper aims to analyze the heuristic potential of the Christian religious and mystical experience comprehension through the subject of culturology. The authors focus on the culturological approach to this experience which is conceptualized as a cultural tradition. Particular attention is paid to the Christian mysticism as spiritual and at the same time cultural heritage. The scientific...
Multiple laboratories have proposed measures of subjective effects of psychedelics as potential mediators of their therapeutic impact. Other work has identified individual differences that covary with subjective responses in informative ways. The range of potential measures of responses, traits, and outcomes is vast. Ideas for new measures are likely numerous. The field will progress...
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a classic psychedelic capable of inducing short-lasting but profound changes in consciousness. As with other psychedelics, the experience induced by DMT strongly depends upon contextual factors, yet the neurobiological determinants of this variability remain unknown. The present study investigated changes in neural oscillations elicited by inhaled DMT, and...
Laplage em RevistaOctober 3, 2021Shirin Shokati Asl, F. Sheikhloovand, Mohammad Farahmand Sarabi et al.
This paper recognizes Rumi's views on the subjects that constitute the nature of mystical experiences, which has been less considered by researchers and has provided evidence to test the theory of researchers such as William James and Walter Stace in the field of mystical experiences. First, some explanations about mystical experiences are presented, then, respectively, the common...
In his recent book, Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment, John Pittard challenges J.L. Schellenberg’s rejection of mystical experience as worthy of enjoying presumptive doxastic trust for two main reasons. First, Pittard holds that Schellenberg wrongly focuses only on avoiding error while placing no emphasis on gaining truth. I argue that, contra Pittard, Schellenberg’s account...
Trajectories of intersection and divergence between philosophical and religiously mystical versions of the ontology of being-in-time are studied in the article. It is concluded that the soul is constituted in qualitatively different time than “I”. If the soul is the junction of times, then “I” lives in the place of time breaking. The exit from time to eternity is preceded by the transformation...
Background: Psychedelics are able to acutely alter emotional reactivity and self-consciousness. However, whether regular, naturalistic use of psychedelics can be linked to more persistent, trait-level changes in these domains remains an open question.Aim: To test three hypotheses: i) psychedelics use is related to higher positive and lower negative emotional reactivity; ii) psychedelics use is...
Ayon Maharaj’s Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and CrossCultural Philosophy of Religion (2018; henceforth, IPIR) is an excellent book. It contributes to cross-cultural philosophy of religion by showing not only that a profound philosophical dialogue between prima facie different philosophical traditions is possible and needed, but also by making a clear case that Western...
Throughout history, people have described alterations of consciousness in which they experienced a sense of transcendence, being part of a much larger unity, sometimes encompassing the whole universe, or of being pure awareness. These experiences have been foundational for many religious and spiritual practices, albeit they have sometimes been treated as suspect or outright psycho- and or...
Background: In controlled, clinical studies of the impact of psilocybin on patients with life-threatening cancers, Johns Hopkins and NYU researchers found that the “intensity of the mystical experience” induced by psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy was directly correlated with the alleviation of cancer-related mental distress. Objective: The purpose of this article is to explore the proposition...
In recent studies, mysticism is divided into three realms: Mystical Experience, Mystical Practice, and Mystical Theory. There are conflicting opinions with regard to their precedence and antecedence. Some are of the opinion that theoretical principles precede mystical experiences and conduct believing that by the time the individual is not epistemologically informed, he does not approach...
F1000ResearchJuly 22, 2021Vivian Siegel, Benjamin Emmert-Aronson5 citations
Background: Practitioners in a variety of spiritual/religious traditions have described “mystical experiences”, defined by a common set of qualities. The “Mystical Experience Questionnaire” (MEQ30) provides a validated and quantitative measure of mystical experience, and has been used successfully to demonstrate that the hallucinogenic substance psilocybin triggers a mystical-type experience....
In a recent Viewpoint, Sanders and Zijlmans call for the demystification of psychedelic science. However, they ignore the subjective aspect of psychedelic experiences. For the subject, mystical experiences are felt as real and can yield personally meaningful insights. It is a philosophical question whether they are true.
AimsThis study examines what effect wilderness has on our conscious awareness, and by extension of that meta-cognition; our physical, mental and spiritual health. It reviews available scientific and artistic literature and integrates this with interviews in order to generate original grounded theory. It was found that intensity of wilderness experience varied proportionally with four mediators;...
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a classic psychedelic capable of inducing short-lasting but profound changes in consciousness. As with other psychedelics, the experience induced by DMT strongly depends upon contextual factors, yet the neurobiological determinants of this variability remain unknown. We combined wireless electroencephalography and source imaging to map changes in neural...
Modern psychological research on meditation has demonstrated its extensive psychological and physical benefits. Much of this modern research relies on ‘mindfulness’ training protocols, such as the popular MBSR program (from the 1970s) and similar offshoots. Though certainly useful, these mindfulness interventions are limited in scope. Their contents do not reflect voluminous recent research...