August 28, 2026
Holly Hepburn
Renewed clinical interest in psychedelics has drawn attention to their challenging effects, yet most phenomenological and psychometric work derives from psilocybin, leaving cross-substance variation underexplored. This thesis employed codebook thematic analysis to examine challenging experiences across DMT, psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine, utilising 146 naturalistic accounts collected from...
Routledge eBooks
August 27, 2026
Yehuda Israely
Chapter 11 asks what lies beyond structure: what happens when the signifier fails, and who stands at the edge of the community of the signifier. It begins from Lévi-Strauss’s reference to the “signified without signifier,” and follows a concrete figure of it: Fu, the village fool who circles the border between village and forest, present in the community yet outside its discourse, clinging to...
PsyArXiv Preprints
August 27, 2026
preprint
Abstract: Psychedelics have been used for spiritual purposes for centuries. However, concerns have been raised regarding spiritual bypassing, maladaptive meaning-making, and increased suggestibility when psychedelics are combined with religious or spiritual beliefs. We examined spiritual bypassing, receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit, subclinical psychotic experiences, well-being, and...
Neuropsychopharmacology Reports
August 27, 2026
Futaba Umemura, Hiroko Kotajima‐Murakami, Justin C Strickland et al.
INTRODUCTION: Interest in therapeutic applications of psychedelics has recently resurged. Mystical-type and challenging experiences that are elicited by psychedelics are commonly assessed using the 30-item Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ-30) and the 26-item Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), respectively. The brief 4-item MEQ (MEQ-4) and 7-item CEQ (CEQ-7) may reduce respondent...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 25, 2026
S Dwivedi
preprint
Shiv Charcha is an emergent religio-spiritual movement centered around the idea that Śiva, the Hindu god, popularly known as Mahādeva, is a universal guru ("jagatguru"). Adherents of Shiv Charcha refer to Śiva as "Śivaguru". It was founded in the 1980s by Saheb Shri Harindranand and involves organisation of charchā (discussions) based on the revelations of Śiva's "jagatguru" form to the...
Virtual Reality
August 25, 2026
Liat Abouhav, Keren Nitzan, Ravid Doron
Abstract As mental health challenges continue to rise, there is increasing interest in interventions that promote psychological change through emotionally and experientially rich states. One well-studied example involves mystical-type experiences, typically reported in psychedelic-assisted interventions. Virtual reality (VR), with its immersive and embodied qualities, has emerged as a promising...
Scientia et Fides
August 24, 2026
Rizziero Carofano, Liberato De Caro
Maria Valtorta, a mystic lived in Italy in the XX century, claimed to have received mystical visions about the life of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and some saints. She reported in her writings texts and dictations attributed to Jesus, her guardian angel, Azaria, and the Paraclete. Additionally, she wrote an autobiography. These texts underwent binary and multiclass supervised classification using...
Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care
August 24, 2026
Ryan G. Erbe
Emotions such as desire, eros, or delight are sometimes treated with suspicion in Christian spiritual formation. However, some modern theologians propose a different perspective such as Philip Sheldrake who describes desire as the primary animator of the spiritual dimension of life. Building on this insight, this paper proposes an affective feedback loop where emotions such as desire draw...
Religious Education
August 23, 2026
Bert Roebben
The philosophical and theological hermeneutics in Meister Eckhart’s German sermons offer an interesting framework for reflecting on personal formation in education today. His ideas on identity, language, ethics, work, and trust open a “space for desire” that goes beyond academic performance and the transfer of knowledge. Relying on the mystical language of Eckhart, existential questions among...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
August 23, 2026
Benjamin Pham
preprint
This paper examines dimethyltryptamine (DMT) as one of the most unusual and scientifically provocative psychoactive substances ever studied. It traces DMT’s history from Indigenous Amazonian ayahuasca traditions and Richard Spruce’s nineteenth-century observations to twentieth-century psychedelic science, countercultural fascination, prohibition, and the modern revival of clinical research. The...