This study aimed to determine whether the 30-item Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30) is suitable for measuring non-psychedelic mystical experiences or whether a subset of questions from the 43-item Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ43) is more appropriate. Participants (N = 136) completed an online survey about their non-psychedelic mystical experience, which included the MEQ43 and...
Psychopathy has long been considered untreatable. The purpose of this paper is to provide a report from the field on therapeutic gains made in the case of a psychopathic personality and to outline what appear to be the most effective aspects of the treatment, as well as to help integrate current psychedelic research and theory with psychoanalytic theory. These therapeutic factors include:...
Abstract Scholars across the academic spectrum have written about the renewed interest in psychedelics that is commonly called the Psychedelic Renaissance (PR). Psychedelic religion is a major component of the PR, as psychedelic churches are growing exponentially and as people who consume and who research psychedelics routinely contend that these substances induce or occasion religious,...
Background: Research with the Psychedelic Experience Questionnaire/Scale (PES) focuses on questions relating to mystical experience (Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ)). The psychometric potential of the non-MEQ items of the PES remains largely unexplored. Aims: We investigated whether the PES also yields subscales besides the MEQ30 subscales. Methods: Data from 239 PES measurements (140...
While Rosemary Radford Ruether is widely, and rightly, acknowledged as a prophetic Catholic scholar–activist, her interest in and experience of mysticism is rarely emphasized. However, Ruether had an impactful mystical experience as a young woman, and the themes of this experience echo throughout her body of work. This paper paints a portrait of Ruether as both a profoundly prophetic...
This paper argues that practitioners of psychedelic-assisted therapy could learn a great deal from Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of psychoanalysis in Anti-Oedipus, as well as the practice of materialist psychiatry – schizoanalysis – that they offer in its stead. Much of the clinical research on psychedelics (particularly psilocybin) over the past fifteen years has privileged mystical...
This groundbreaking study addresses a niche area within mysticism research, exploring the confluence of totemic spiritual practices and distinct mystical experiences. Moving beyond conventional Abrahamic viewpoints, it interrogates mainstream frameworks that either marginalize or pathologize these spiritual occurrences. Utilizing a cross-disciplinary approach that integrates religious studies,...
Abstract. This article focuses on the dialectical encounter of the cataphatic and apophatic spirituality paths which are by psalmist based on “why” and Meister Eckhart on “without why” in responding to the reality of life, especially amid suffering. For the psalmist, the where, why, and when questions arise not from doubt but from Yahweh’s steadfast love (ḥesed). Even though the psalmist and...
Spirit possession can be considered as a complex phenomenon found to be still in practice in many societies around the world. Anthropologists have spent long years of time conducting ethnographic field studies on spirit possession and possession-trance in different societies around the world.Belief in spirit possession and possession-trance are ancient and very widespread as seen in the...
Abstract I propose that positive mood should not be among the criteria for determining when or if psychedelic experiences are mystical. My primary reasons are: 1) unlike rare proposed mystical criteria such as feelings of self-dissolution and time-transcendence, positive mood does not clearly separate mystical experiences from other emotionally powerful experiences like being in love; 2) other...