What they did yesterday afternoon ~ by Warsan Shire
they set my aunts house on fire
i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who used to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said
hello
he said
warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?
i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.
later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere
Domestic violence. Childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse. Neglect. Developmental trauma. Brokenheartedness. Loss. Death. Moral Injury. Rape. Chronic pain. Trauma. These are the experiences of being human, and I have seen first-hand the variety of ways in which unresolved suffering wreaks havoc on people’s psyches, sense of self, relationships, and lives, including my own. And yet, people are resilient. Somehow from the depths of suffering healing can and does happen. As a life-long student of healing, the question that is always at the forefront of my mind is how? What constitutes healing? Why do some people heal and some people not heal? What gets in the way? How active must we be in the healing process? What is the most efficient pathway? How do we reconcile that the greatest injury that happens seems to be the injury to the self, while at the same time, honoring the wisdom traditions that maintain that there is something greater than the self? Or, that the self as we think of it, as a separate, singular entity, is an illusion? These are the kinds of questions that brought me to study Transpersonal Psychology at Naropa University in Boulder, CO and now Psychedelic Therapy and Research at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. This paper will briefly explain the history and cultural context of psychedelics, summarize the current research findings on psychedelic therapy and mystical experiences, as well as look at why they are healing and what psychotherapy can learn from them.
Since the beginning of recorded time people have been using plant medicines to alter states of consciousness. Frescos of mushroom-holding shamans were depicted in caves on the Tassili plateau of Southeastern Algeria dating as far back as 5000 BCE. Records indicate that Native Americans in the Rio Grande area used peyote as early as 3700 BCE. The Greeks used kykeon, believed to be a derivative of ergot, in their ritual ceremonies in 2000 BCE. The first recorded use of ayahuasca was recorded by Jesuit priests in the 1700’s, but it’s safe to guess that use had started long before that in the Amazon. A comprehensive timeline of psychedelic use can be found at: https://psychedelictimes.com/psychedelic-timeline/
Fast forward to the last century. The 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s were a time of thriving research on LSD (synthesized by Albert Hoffman in 1938 in Sandoz laboratory in Switzerland) psilocybin, ibogaine, salvia, and mescaline, and how they could be used to treat various mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and addictions. William Richards, author of Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, states, “In the mid-1960’s alone, over one thousand publications appeared that supported the promise of LSD in safely deepening and accelerating psychotherapy. Some forty thousand persons participated in these studies. Six international conferences were convened.” (pg. 3) Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary, two professors at Harvard University, started the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Rather than studying how it could help with mental illness or addictions, their focus was the effect psilocybin had on human consciousness. They also supervised graduate student Walter Pahnke in conducting the famous “Good Friday Experiment,” where psilocybin was given to 20 volunteer theology students on Good Friday in a chapel to see if it would induce a mystical experience similar to those recorded in mystical literature. Indeed, it did, the majority of subjects who received psilocybin scoring highly on most or all of the categories of the mystical experience measure, while the control group scored much lower on average. In 1963, Walter Pahnke would publish his findings as his Harvard PhD dissertation entitled, Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness. His work was instrumental in laying the foundation for the understanding of how psilocybin can invoke a mystical experience, as well as for defining the term and helping create a questionnaire to measure the experience.*
The counterculture movement of the 1960’s also popularized psychedelics outside of the research setting in combination with music, peaceful protests, and literature. People were questioning the status quo and civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and environmental activists were finding their voices. Timothy Leary spoke to a crowd at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, CA in 1966, after the Harvard Psilocybin Project had been shut down due to political pressure and perceived ethical violations, and told them all to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” This became a mantra of sorts for the counterculture protesting the Vietnam War, which at this point had been going on for over 10 years.
In 1970, the counterculture and political forces came to a head, and the Nixon administration passed the Controlled Substances Act, effectively starting the “War on Drugs,” and bringing the idea that “drug abuse was public enemy number one,” into mainstream American culture, and even calling Timothy Leary, “The most dangerous man in America.” (Leary would later write a book with that title). The Controlled Substances Act shut down almost all psychedelic research, effectively bringing scientific understanding and data collection on these medicines and their potential to ease human suffering to a screeching halt. Labs were raided, equipment confiscated, and funding terminated. Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind, offers an excellent summary of this time period and explains how the research was legally revived.
Through the relentless advocacy of people like Rick Doblin, Rick Strassman, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, and David Nichols to name a few, the last decade has resulted in what is often referred to as the psychedelic research renaissance. Using primarily MDMA (first synthesized by Anton Köllisch in 1912 and later by Alexander Shulgin in 1965) and psilocybin, research is currently being conducted all over the world to study the treatment of issues such as treatment resistant PTSD and depression, end of life anxiety and/or depression due to a terminal illness, and addiction. In the United States research sites include: Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Yale University, UCLA, Usona Institute, and various sites funded by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the Heffter Research Institute, and the Beckely Foundation. The results have been overwhelmingly positive, and one finding that is seemingly consistent is that having a mystical experience holds great healing potential. For some this is a controversial statement because historically, mystical experiences have been relegated to priests, shamans, and other “official” religious clergy, or at the very least were only to be experienced by a commoner within the context of a sanctified religious ceremony or prayer. In their book Stealing Fire, Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal put it this way, “It’s a divide between those who believe that direct access to God should be moderated by a learned elite and those who believe direct access should be available to anyone at any time. Top-down versus bottom up.” (pg. 53-54). Access to psychedelics provide widespread “bottom up” access to mystical experiences, and can call into question a whole slew of belief systems which may not align with cultural conditioning. This is in part what led to their illegalization in 1970, and so present day researchers are begging those who see the healing potential of these medicines: please proceed with the upmost respect and caution when working with these medicines, and don’t do anything to jeopardize the research and pending legalization on the horizon which could help so many.
So how exactly do you measure a mystical experience in a research setting? One way is by using a Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ). This is a helpful tool as it takes something difficult to define and gives it structure and language. The most frequently used version of the MEQ is the 43-item Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ43), also called the Pahnke–Richards MEQ, after it’s developers Walter Pahnke* and William Richards. (See appendix A for more detail). The questionnaire asks several questions about seven domains of mystical experiences:
- Internal Unity: Loss of identity or personality
- External Unity: The experience of “all is one”
- Transcendence of Time and Space: Loss of one’s usual sense of time and space, being outside of time and space
- Ineffability and Paradoxicality: Difficult to articulate, seemingly contradictory insights
- Sense of sacredness: sense of amazement, awe, holiness, reverence
- Noetic quality: insight gained through intuition, certainty of an encounter with ultimate reality
- Deeply felt positive mood: experience of overflowing energy, joy, love
Another frequently used questionnaire called the MEQ30 states: “Scores on the MEQ30 during a psychedelic experience are important because a series of studies have shown that higher scores on the MEQ30 during the ‘trip’ are one of the strongest predictors of beneficial outcomes weeks and months later for both distressed & healthy participants.” (See appendix B).
A Brief Summary of the Current Research:
Below I’ve provided live links for those interested in learning more about the research protocols, measurement tools, sample sizes, researchers, and statistical analyses. A key point to remember, which may not come through if you just read my summaries, is that psychedelic therapy is an involved process which includes careful screening, preparation, and integration components. These are all considered to be equally important to the medicine session. Psychedelic therapy pays precise attention to “set and setting.”
Set is the shorthand for mindset, which includes the preparation of the client, their personality structure, expectations, the issues they are bringing to the session, their intention or question for the session, and their overall mental state going into the experience. The relationship that has been built between the therapist(s) and the client is also a part of the “set.”
The setting refers to the physical environment, which is arranged with great care, and includes the music, lighting, and objects in the room, as well as the presence of the therapist. A tradition that has been passed down is the inclusion of a red rose in the session room, as a way of bringing in the natural world and paying homage to the lineage of the work. The set and setting of the psychedelic experience is very important for preparing the ground for the possibility of a mystical experience.
Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy:
In 2006, researchers from Johns Hopkins University published results from their research on psilocybin entitled, Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. These research volunteers were deemed to be medically and psychologically healthy, and had no prior psychedelic use. Sometimes this population is referred to as “healthy normals.” Thirty-three percent of the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience as being the single most spiritually significant experience of his or her life, with an additional 38% rating it to be among the top five most spiritually significant experiences. 2 months later the participants rated the experience, “as having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance and attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in attitudes and behavior.”
In 2014, another research study out of Johns Hopkins University on psilocybin-assisted therapy to help people quit smoking, found at the 12-month follow up that 10 of the 15 participants had abstained from smoking, and that the outcomes were significantly correlated to having had a mystical experience. “Participants attributed great personal meaning and spiritual significance to their psilocybin experiences at 12-months post target quit date, with 13 (86.7%) rating these experiences among the five most personally meaningful of their lives, and 13 (86.7%) rating them among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives.”
In 2016, results from a psilocybin-assisted therapy study with cancer patients out of NYU were published which showed that psilocybin reduced anxiety, depression, and existential distress associated with having a terminal illness. Again, there was correlation with participants having a mystical experience, the researchers concluding, “The psilocybin-induced mystical experience mediated the therapeutic effect of psilocybin on anxiety and depression.” Currently NYU is recruiting for a research study to look at the effects of psilocybin on alcohol dependence. The same study is in process at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. They are looking to enroll 180 participants by 2020.
MDMA Assisted Therapy Outcomes:
MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) is not classified as a traditional psychedelic, but rather as an “empathogen,” a substance which creates an empathic state, or an “entactogen,” which creates a touching within. Unlike it’s psychedelic counterparts, MDMA became illegal in 1985. Previous to that it had been used by therapists for decades to help make therapy less painful and faster. For more information on the history, therapeutic use, and healing potential of MDMA, Julie Holland’s book, Ecstasy: The Complete Guide is an excellent resource. Although many like to emphasize the distinction between MDMA and psychedelics, for the purpose of this paper I’d like to focus on the similarities. They both are currently being researched in FDA clinical trials with promising results, and they both promote healing in part through a mystical experience. In particular, MDMA facilitates internal and external unity, a sense of sacredness, a noetic quality, and a deeply felt positive mood.
MAPS has been conducting research on treatment resistant PTSD and MDMA-assisted therapy through FDA approved clinical trials. The results have given hope to veterans, first responders, sexual abuse/assault survivors, and others living with what had seemed to be incurable PTSD. Results published in 2010 from a Phase 2 clinical trial entitled, The safety and efficacy of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted psychotherapy in subjects with chronic, treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder: the first randomized controlled pilot study showed that 83% of those who received MDMA therapy no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis two months after treatment was completed. MDMA helps people access suppressed emotions and experience them in a calm, safe, and open way, without the need to dissociate, allowing for a window of tolerance in which trauma can be processed. It also increases one’s ability to feel empathy towards oneself and towards others, at times helping people tap into an experience of oneness. Metzner and Adamson explain this in The Nature of the MDMA Experience and its Role in Healing, Psychotherapy, and Spritual Practice, writing that MDMA facilitates “[a] shift in identification-from being fully identified with the ego to becoming the larger Self, the larger consciousness…” (pg. 167).
In May of 2019, the international journal Psychopharmacology published an analysis of six phase 2 clinical trials for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and treatment resistant PTSD that were sponsored by MAPS. The trials were held in Charleston, South Carolina (two trials); Boulder, Colorado; Vancouver, British Columbia; Soluthurn, Switzerland; and Beer Yaakov, Israel, and were double-blind (neither the therapist or the research participant knew ahead of time if they are given the MDMA or the placebo). Treatment included two eight-hour MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions spaced three to five weeks apart, combined with weekly non-drug psychotherapy sessions. The results showed that 54% of the participants that received MDMA no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis at the end of the trial compared to 23% in the control group. These results paved the way for the phase 3 clinical trials, and if they continue to demonstrate efficacy and safety, FDA approval of MDMA via prescription in a supervised setting is expected by 2021.
Why Are Mystical Experiences Healing?
Since ineffability and paradoxicality are a part of defining mystical experiences, it’s hard to nail down a concrete answer as to why mystical experiences are healing, but they seem to get to the heart of what humans are yearning for–the transcendence of suffering. Suffering can be healed through a mystical experience because it creates a deep knowing that the problems of the self are but a small part of the bigger picture of life, and it helps us see that we are that too- a part of the bigger picture. It takes our usual narrow focus on ourselves and our problems and widens the lens through which we see ourselves and our connection to the Universe and everything in it. A mystical experience invites us into the mystery, giving us a taste of what we all crave: an understanding of the meaning of life, God, a greater purpose, connection instead of isolation and separateness, and a higher consciousness that transcends our ordinary daily awareness. In addition, it can offer the experience of ego death. Perhaps the fear of death is at the root of all fear, and having the opportunity to face death and move through it, coming out alive on the other side, shows us that there is actually nothing to fear. Also, knowing that we are going to die and actually contacting that truth motivates re-evaluation of our lives and encourages us to be more present, letting go of habits, relationships, jobs, and beliefs that no longer serve us, and focusing our attention on what does. Perhaps the best way to understand why mystical experiences are healing is to listen to first-hand accounts:
A 35 year-old woman, computer programmer, about her MDMA experience, as reported in The Nature of the MDMA Experience in Healing, Psychotherapy, and Spiritual Practice):
“The ego wants everything. It’s like an octopus grabbing and grabbing. Ego wants to control, and it gets threatened. The reason my ego is so threatened is that I’ve lived so much of my life not here…I realize for the first time that I want to be here…I’m not my ego… My ego is a part of who I am, but I’m not my ego.”
A man struggling with sex addiction explained his experience with MDMA, also in The Nature of the MDMA Experience in Healing, Psychotherapy, and Spiritual Practice):
“With the experience of MDMA, on the other hand, I feel none of that compulsion. It really has an entirely different quality, as if it’s in some way outside all the time, outside my life and my neuroses, literally a taste of the infinite bliss of being a conscious entity. In a very fundamental sense, it is the kind of experience that every conscious being really wants and needs.”
William Richards writes of his own experience in Sacred Knowledge: “In my own personal journaling at age twenty-three, I found in the aftermath of mystical consciousness what I considered a healthy independence from social pressures and increased freedom to authentically ‘be myself.’” (pg 35).
Rick Doblin from an interview with EntheoNation: “So I started thinking that this new mode of thinking is really the sort of mystical unitive state that we understand that we’re really at heart all bound to each other, all part of the same web of life. And then if you can steal that and know that then you’re likely to be less prejudice and more accepting and less willing to resort to violence.”
Poets, writers, and spiritual teachers have a way of explaining the ineffable:
“For the most part, what we think of as ‘I’ is nothing more than a whole heap of conditioning.”
~ Etienne de L’Amour
“Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
“That’s the paradox of selflessness—by periodically losing our minds we stand a better chance of finding ourselves.” ~ Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal
“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.” ~Meister Eckhart
What Psychotherapy Can Learn from Psychedelic-assisted Psychotherapy
Psychedelics have the power to create mystical experiences and healing, and, there are drawbacks to this healing modality including the possibility of an adverse reaction (although this seems to be rare when people are carefully screened), the fact that they are currently illegal, and the misconception that they are a “magic pill” instead of a catalyst for intensive healing and integration work. Therapists that want to work legally and are not involved in research can still learn from the psychedelic-assisted therapy protocol and placebo results. For example, 23% of the participants in the phase 2 MDMA-assisted psychotherapy study that received the placebo did not qualify for a PTSD diagnosis after the study ended. These participants had all been diagnosed with treatment-resistant PTSD, and had received various treatments and medications prior to the study that didn’t help. This points to other factors at work in the therapy protocol besides the MDMA. What are those factors? The other aspects of the therapy including:
- Identifying a specific intention or question for the work
- Doing adequate preparation, including creating a trusting therapeutic alliance, self-care routines, and identification of the client’s social support network
- On the day of the journey session, inviting people to lay down with an eye shade, listen to pre-selected music, and allow their inner healer to guide their session, rather than seeing the therapist as the “expert”
- Having periods of silence interspersed with moments of talking and connection
- Including time at the end of the session for the client to journal about insights
- Following up with integration sessions and ways for the client to implement what was learned from the journey session
In other words, therapists can mimic a psychedelic-assisted therapy session without actually using a psychedelic.
Therapists should not be afraid to talk to their clients about other ways of cultivating mystical experiences that are in alignment for him/her as a way to promote healing. The reports of those experiencing mystical experiences via psychedelics are in alignment with those that are created through other forms of spiritual practice such as meditation, breath-work, yoga, martial arts, spending extended periods of time in nature, music, art, dancing, surfing, prayer, and fasting to name a few. If the client is opposed to the language of mystical experience, flow state or peak experience may be substituted.
This is an exciting time in the field of psychology and psychedelic-assisted therapy. As the research continues to demonstrate the healing of those suffering from PTSD, depression, anxiety and addiction through psychedelic-assisted therapy, the possibility of legalization becomes more and more of a reality. With this comes the responsibility of doctors, therapists, and clients to use these medicines safely and with intention, giving credence to their power to invoke the mystical, shake up existing belief systems and structures, and create shifts in consciousness. Professionals doing this work need to commit to their clients, knowing that these shifts can create inner and outer chaos, and that sometimes things get worse before they get better. There also needs to be an awareness created around what constitutes “over-use.” Integration is the hard work, figuring out how to take the insights and awareness gleaned from a session and make lasting changes that support a healthy and meaningful life.
Appendix A
States of Consciousness Questionnaire and Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire
Instructions: Looking back on the extended session you have just experienced, please rate the degree to which at any time during that session, you experienced the following phenomena. In making each of your ratings, use the following scale:
0 – none; not at all. 1 – so slight cannot decide 2 – slight 3 – moderate 4 -strong (equivalent in degree to any previous strong experience or expectation of this description) 5 – extreme (more than ever before in my life and stronger than 4)
Items and Scoring: There are 100 items in the States of Consciousness Questionnaire. Forty- three items on this questionnaire comprise the Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire which provides scale scores for each of seven domains of mystical experiences: Internal Unity (6 items); External Unity (6 items); Transcendence of Time and Space (8 items); Ineffability and Paradoxicality (5 items); Sense of Sacredness (7 items); Noetic Quality (4 items); and Deeply-Felt Positive Mood (7 items). Data on each scale are expressed as a proportion of the maximum possible score. The remaining 57 items in the questionnaire served as distracter items and were not scored. Numerals associated with each item indicate the numerical sequence of the items.
- Internal Unity
- Loss of your usual identity.
35. Freedom from the limitations of your personal self and feeling a unity or bond with what was felt to be greater than your personal self.
41. Experience of pure Being and pure awareness (beyond the world of sense impressions).
54. Experience of oneness in relation to an “inner world” within.
77. Experience of the fusion of your personal self into a larger whole.
83. Experience of unity with ultimate reality. - External Unity
- Experience of oneness or unity with objects and/or persons perceived in your surroundings 27. With eyes open, seeing something in your surroundings more and more intensely and then feeling as though you and it become one.
47. Experience of the insight that “all is One”. - Loss of feelings of difference between yourself and objects or persons in your surroundings. 62. Intuitive insight into the inner nature of objects and/or persons in your surroundings.
74. Awareness of the life or living presence in all things.
III. Transcendence of Time and Space
- Loss of your usual sense of time.
12. Feeling that you experienced eternity or infinity.
15. Loss of your usual sense of space.
29. Loss of usual awareness of where you were.
34. Sense of being “outside of” time, beyond past and future.
42. Feeling that you have been “outside of” history in a realm where time does not exist. - Being in a realm with no space boundaries. 65. Experience of timelessness.
- Ineffability and Paradoxicality
- Sense that the experience cannot be described adequately in words.
19. Experience of a paradoxical awareness that two apparently opposite principles or situations are both true.
23. Feeling that you could not do justice to your experience by describing it in words.
59. Sense that in order to describe parts of your experience you would have to use statements that appear to be illogical, involving contradictions and paradoxes.
86. Feeling that it would be difficult to communicate your own experience to others who have not had similar experiences. - Sense of Sacredness
- Experience of amazement.
8. Sense of the limitations and smallness of your everyday personality in contrast to the Infinite. 31. Sense of profound humility before the majesty of what was felt to be sacred or holy.
36. Sense of being at a spiritual height.
55. Sense of reverence.
73. Feeling that you experienced something profoundly sacred and holy.
80. Sense of awe or awesomeness. - Noetic Quality
- Feeling that the consciousness experienced during part of the session was more real than your normal awareness of everyday reality.
9. Gain of insightful knowledge experienced at an intuitive level.
22. Certainty of encounter with ultimate reality (in the sense of being able to “know” and “see” what is really real) at some time during your session. - You are convinced now, as you look back on your experience, that in it you encountered ultimate reality (i.e. that you “knew” and “saw” what was really real).
VII. Deeply-Felt Positive Mood
- Experience of overflowing energy.
- Feelings of tenderness and gentleness.
- Feelings of peace and tranquility.
43. Experience of ecstasy.
50. Feelings of exaltation.
60. Feelings of universal or infinite love. - Feelings of joy.
Source: RR Griffiths, WA Richards, U McCann, R Jesse. 2006. “Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance.” Psychopharmacology (Berl). 187(3), 268-83, commentaries 284-292. Available on the Council of Spiritual Practices’ Psilocybin Research page (pdf).
Appendix B
mystical experience questionnaire (meq30)
instructions: looking back on the entirety of your psychedelic session, please rate the degree to which at any time during that session you experienced the following phenomena. Answer each question according to your feelings, thoughts, and experiences at the time of the psychedelic session. In making each of your ratings, use the following scale: 0 none/not at all; 1 so slight cannot decide; 2 slight; 3 moderate; 4 strong (equivalent in degree to any other strong experience); 5 extreme (more than any other time in my life and stronger than 4). Feel free to use ‘half-point in-between scores’ if these are applicable.
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 1 | Loss of your usual sense of time. (T) | ||||||
| 2 | Experience of amazement. (P) | ||||||
| 3 | Sense that the experience cannot be described adequately in words. (I) | ||||||
| 4 | Gain of insightful knowledge experienced at an intuitive level | ||||||
| 5 | Feeling that you experienced eternity or infinity. | ||||||
| 6 | Experience of oneness or unity with the objects and/or persons perceived in your surroundings. | ||||||
| 7 | Loss of your usual sense of space. (T) | ||||||
| 8 | Feelings of tenderness and gentleness. (P) | ||||||
| 9 | Certainty of encounter with ultimate reality (in the sense of being able to ‘know’ and ‘see’ what is really real at some point during your experience). | ||||||
| 10 | Feeling that you could not do justice to your experience by describing it in words. (I) | ||||||
| 11 | Loss of your usual sense of where you were. (T) | ||||||
| 12 | Feelings of peace and tranquillity. (P) | ||||||
| 13 | Sense of being ‘outside of’ time, beyond past and future. (T) | ||||||
| 14 | Freedom from the limitations of your personal self and feeling of unity or bond with what was felt to be greater than your personal self. | ||||||
| 15 | Sense of being at a spiritual height. | ||||||
| 16 | Experience of pure being and pure awareness (beyond the world of sense impressions). | ||||||
| 17 | Experience of ecstasy. (P) | ||||||
| 18 | Experience of the insight that “all is One”. | ||||||
| 19 | Being in a realm with no space boundaries. (T) | ||||||
| 20 | Experience of oneness in relation to an “inner world” within. | ||||||
| 21 | Sense of reverence. | ||||||
| 22 | Experience of timelessness. (T) | ||||||
| 23 | You are convinced now, as you look back on your experience, that in it you encountered ultimate reality (that you ‘knew’ and ‘saw’ what was really real). | ||||||
| 24 | Feeling that you experienced something profoundly sacred and holy. | ||||||
| 25 | Awareness of the life or living presence in all things. | ||||||
| 26 | Experience of the fusion of your personal self into a larger whole. | ||||||
| 27 | Sense of awe or awesomeness. (P) | ||||||
| 28 | Experience of unity with ultimate reality. | ||||||
| 29 | Feeling that it would be difficult to communicate your own experience to others who have not had similar experiences. (I) | ||||||
| 30 | Feelings of joy. (P) | ||||||
scores/%’s: transcendence (T) = /30 = %; positive mood (P) = /30 = %
ineffability (I) = /15 = %; mystical = /75 = %; total score = /150 = %.
meq30 – background information
Note over the page, when scoring – the letter (T, P, I or none) after each question indicates which subscale the question relates to. Where there is no letter (none), the relevant question links to the mystical subscale. My allowing ‘half-point in-between scores’ isn’t typical of earlier research.
Scores on the MEQ30 during a psychedelic experience are important because a series of studies have shown that higher scores on the MEQ30 during the ‘trip’ are one of the strongest predictors of beneficial outcomes weeks and months later for both distressed & healthy participants. Typically, a ‘complete mystical experience’ is defined as scoring 60% or more on all four MEQ30 subscales (Barrett et al, 2015), although some subsequent research has suggested that simply assessing the total MEQ30 score may well be just as good (Bouso et al, 2016).
Drug dose (e.g. 20-30mg/70kg as a higher dose for psilocybin), trait absorption, and intention (personal or spiritual exploration) tend to be associated with higher trip MEQ30 scores.
Barrett, F. S., et al. (2015). “Validation of the revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire in experimental sessions with psilocybin.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 29(11): 1182-1190. (Available in free full text) The 30-item revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30) was previously developed within an online survey of mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin-containing mushrooms. The rated experiences occurred on average eight years before completion of the questionnaire. The current paper validates the MEQ30 using data from experimental studies with controlled doses of psilocybin. Data were pooled and analyzed from five laboratory experiments in which participants (n=184) received a moderate to high oral dose of psilocybin (at least 20 mg/70 kg). Results of confirmatory factor analysis demonstrate the reliability and internal validity of the MEQ30. Structural equation models demonstrate the external and convergent validity of the MEQ30 by showing that latent variable scores on the MEQ30 positively predict persisting change in attitudes, behavior, and well-being attributed to experiences with psilocybin while controlling for the contribution of the participant-rated intensity of drug effects. These findings support the use of the MEQ30 as an efficient measure of individual mystical experiences. A method to score a “complete mystical experience” that was used in previous versions of the mystical experience questionnaire is validated in the MEQ30, and a stand-alone version of the MEQ30 is provided for use in future research.
Johnson, M. W., et al. (2018). “Classic psychedelics: An integrative review of epidemiology, mystical experience, brain network function, and therapeutics.” Pharmacology & Therapeutics. [Online 4 December]. The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative review and offer novel insights regarding human research with classic psychedelics (classic hallucinogens), which are 5HT2AR agonists such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, and psilocybin. Classic psychedelics have been administered as sacraments since ancient times. They were of prominent interest within psychiatry and neuroscience in the 1950s to 1960s, and during this time contributed to the emergence of the field of molecular neuroscience. Promising results were reported for treatment of both end-of-life psychological distress and addiction, and classic psychedelics served as tools for studying the neurobiological bases of psychological disorders. Moreover, classic psychedelics were shown to occasion mystical experiences, which are subjective experiences reported throughout different cultures and religions involving a strong sense of unity, among other characteristics. However, the recreational use of classic psychedelics and their association with the counterculture prompted an end to human research with classic psychedelics in the early 1970s. We review recent therapeutic studies suggesting efficacy in treating psychological distress associated with life-threatening diseases, treating depression, and treating nicotine and alcohol addictions. We also describe the construct of mystical experience and provide a comprehensive review of modern studies investigating classic psychedelic-occasioned mystical experiences and their consequences. These studies have shown classic psychedelics to fairly reliably occasion mystical experiences. Moreover, classic psychedelic-occasioned mystical experiences are associated with improved psychological outcomes in both healthy volunteer and patient populations.We also review neuroimaging studies that suggest neurobiological mechanisms of psychedelics. These studies have also broadened our understanding of the brain, the serotonin system, and the neurobiological basis of consciousness. Finally, we provide the most comprehensive review of epidemiological studies of classic psychedelics to date. Notable among these are a number of studies which have suggested the possibility that nonmedical naturalistic (non-laboratory) use of classic psychedelics is associated with positive mental health and prosocial outcomes, although it is clear that some individuals are harmed by classic psychedelics in non-supervised settings. Overall, these various lines of research suggest that classic psychedelics might hold strong potential as therapeutics, and as tools for experimentally investigating mystical experiences and behavioral-brain function more generally.
Final Paper- California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)
Certificate in Psychedelic Therapies and Research
Dec. 23rd, 2019