Roland Griffiths and Jordan Peterson – Psychology of Psychedelics (Admits Psilocybin Blows Away Meditation)

Contents:

• Intro
• Jordan Peterson Roland Griffiths Interview (March 2, 2021)
• Peterson Busts Griffiths for Self-Contradiction – BEST QUOTES
• Maybe There Can/ Might/ Could/ May Be Some Way to Avoid Awful Crutch of Psilocybin
• Other Methods Can/ Could/ Might/ May Produce Exact Same Effects as Psilocybin
• Video: Parallels of long-term meditation and psilocybin use | Roland Griffiths (Jan. 19, 2017)
• Article “Transcending and Transforming Psychedelics” About Harvard Webinar Series
• Griffithsism, Reduction of Altered State to Social Domain, Ineffabilism Mysticism, New Age Meditationism – Hallmarks of Boomerism
• Defining ‘Boomerism’ as a Noxious Dead-End Set of Narratives
• See Also

Intro

One of the most worthwhile videos. Around 2:10:00 JBP instantly slams Griiffiths’ canard “other methods can/ could/ might/ may simulate psilocybin”, why is everyone so eager to make this empty “pigs can fly” assertion?

The data indicates that nothing comes close, JBP rightly points out.

So why does everyone hasten to emphasize that maybe pigs can fly?

Sheer conjecture is not science, and is countered by the evidence.

I’m against Griffiths’ defense of meditation; JBP emphasizes Griffiths’ data that experienced meditators’ experience is totally overwhemed by intensity and reliability of psilocybin.

Jordan Peterson Roland Griffiths Interview (March 2, 2021)

February 22, 2023 – I copied my transcription from Idea Development page 15 (that link is in See Also) to the below sections.

The Psychology of Psychedelics | Roland Griffiths | EP 167
Recorded March 2nd, 2021
Uploaded May 10, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGIP-3Q-p_s&t=2635s –

When I advised Oregon Psilocybin board, communicating with them, this was a turning point because I failed to connect the goal, the treasure, the appeal, the completion – with the threat and appeasing the threat.

Always put the dragon threat in the context of the treasure pursued.

The experience of the threat of loss of control isn’t isolated; it is packaged together with pursuing Transcendent Knowledge treasure.

treasure pursuit: “Finally found a way of thinking” – Bob Daisley, album Diary of a Madman.

44:00 – Griffiths or Peterson compares the bad trip to the dragon:
“faced the dragon, faced the greatest terror“

45:43 Peterson – “What they learn is that they can withstand the fear [after they sacrifice -cm], that’s what generalizes. …

“You’re not counter-conditioning the fear, what you’re doing is showing the person that there’s more to them than they thought.

“There isn’t anything more salutary than that.

[46:08]

“That’s specifically why you’re encouraged in mythological stories to confront the dragon and get the gold, that’s the basic story

“and it’s very interesting how that becomes portrayed in a psychedelic experience.“

No, that’s backwards. The {dragon threat when getting the treasure} comes FROM psychedelics.

Griffiths 57:40 – “we have developed a mystical questionnaire that’s very good”

No, the MEQ sucks, bad.

The Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) disowns negative experiences, which are caught by the mockup half-baked CEQ, which removes all specific effects of control transformation, replacing them by ordinary-state conceived “Grief” instead.

Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ)
Challenging Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ)

“The key features of this are

• sense of unity; interconnectedness of all people and all things, introvertively or extravertively, the literature on mystical experiences outside of drugs [how do you know??] …
• sense of sacredness or reverence, precious about it.
• the Noetic sense that it’s true, more real than everyday waking consciousness.
• Subfactors:
• positive mood,
• transcendence of time and space, and
• ineffability. I ask them ‘tell me about your experience.’

[a prompting framing question, what a surprise that they give the answer they are prompted and set up to give:].

“They say ‘I can’t even put this into words’ – that’s one of the 6 criteria of a mystic experience.”

Ask a newbie to describe their high-dose Psilocybin experience, they say “that’s hard”, therefore, we should label this as “MYSTICAL INEFFABILITY”, referencing heavy-handed scholarly theology of Christian mysticism tradition.

Here we get Roland Griffiths’ boomer personal invented conception of mystic experience and glorified Meditation and Stace’s 1960 Ineffabilism mysticism.

Griffiths is telling falsehoods here about the nature of mystic experiencing. This misconception is baked into the so-called “scientific” basis of Hopkins’ Psychedelic Science.

1:02:00 RG: “You’re rewriting the underlying operating system.”

2:01:30 RG: “meditation … none of them [advanced meditators in our current psilocybin research] would say that psychedelics are a substitute for what the meditation practice is, because meditation results in the stability of awareness, that psychedelics certainly do not.”

“so then the next step was religious professionals and we are uh collecting the last data on that.

“it was a study that was run jointly at Hopkins and NYU. [todo: article URL]

search Hopkins Griffiths NYU meditation

search Hopkins Griffiths NYU meditate

search Hopkins Griffiths NYU meditator

“and we’ve made a pact in the study team not to talk about any results until we’re ready to uh publish but but i can tell you i can give you a broad brush stroke of what we’re thinking there uh of course and and hoping perhaps maybe because we we

“maybe we can close this off with a little bit of discussion about you know the potential impact of this

“i mean i’m very interested for example in the decline of religious belief across the west and there’s a there’s a necessity for revitalization and

and well back to back to the religious leaders

yeah so that’s the question what so among people who have made career commitments to uh to ministry and and and to supporting people’s spiritual growth

“what what happens with them with a with a psychedelic experience and and how does that fit with their ministry uh their engagement in that and uh and their belief – 

“do you plan to do long-term efficacy studies like i’d be really curious if your your psychedelic enhanced ministers let’s say were then more credible proponents for their community and their congregations were disproportionately for example or perhaps not likely to grow

“we probably don’t have the power to uh address that question.

“we’ll certainly follow these people up and the initial study we have follow up to uh 12 months and and uh and

“we’re doing a lot of qualitative uh work on this

um i think i think

what i can say without without saying anything specific about the data is uh uh that

the results are not inconsistent with that that we have seen in healthy volunteers and beginning meditators and long-term meditators uh that that is there’s something astonishing about these experiences

“and i’ll i’ll have to uh leave it at that but but i think

“the implications are are are important

“i mean so the question is yeah

“how does this interact with faith traditions?

“that’s going to be an interesting story to tell and and to have unfold.

“but i don’t think i can say anything further about it.”

JP: “yeah well yeah fair enough fair enough

um i guess i’m i’m sorry i can backing off the study per se i mean you know”

2:04:00 Griffiths confirms my claim that he’s making a religion out of Ineffability in particular.

Machine transcription of JP/RG interview:

“there’s something about these experiences that speak to the ineffable uh and uh and and this whole project of organizing community [‘community’ is a giveaway tip-off word- beware of reductionism of the altered state to the ordinary-state social domain] around um around investigation and cultivation of [mushrooms?] of the um fruits [fruiting bodies] of those kinds of experiences and

“i think that’s hugely consequential so

“one of the one of the features of the you know that i’ve already discussed of the primary mystical experience [as Griffithsism is defined above: ineffability, positive mood, unity, sense of truth]

is this sense of the interconnectedness of all people [red flag: reductionism to the social realm] and it’s sacred and it’s true and and and from that arises this sense of a pro-social [the main, popular bad move: reductionism of ASC to the ordinary-state social realm] sense of altruism

a sense that we’re all in this together[reductionism to social]

“well if that isn’t the golden rule [social reduc’m] and if that doesn’t you know speak to the nature of you know most ethical and moral[social reduc’m] traditions.

JP: “okay so i want to unpack that for a minute because it’s so surprising like you can go over that quickly and it doesn’t sound surprising it’s

“so the drugs are producing an expansion of human experience that’s meaningful and positive”

…

2:07:55: “hard to see how all that couldn’t be of significance to religious communities

“and then the question is well what should be what do you talk how do you talk to religious people about this especially if they’re more on the conservative end of things because a less conservative hypothesis could hardly be imagined

“right it’s the psychedelic origin of the deep judeo-christian ethic

“that’s that’s a radical idea and it it brings up this question well we lost this technology essentially something like 2 000 years ago in the west except in underground places“

False. The Middle Ages has explicit psilocybin branching-message mushroom trees or other psilocybin (and Amanita) imagery in mainstream cathedrals, chapels, and illuminated manuscripts.

“do we reincorporate it?

“how do we reincorporate it?“

“and what does that mean on the religious front, like the conservative religious front with regards to say practice”

Peterson Busts Griffiths for Self-Contradiction

128 m 41 s = 128 *60 + 41 = 7721s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGIP-3Q-p_s&t=7721s

2:08:41 “well but again i would say it doesn’t have to be psychedelics. [<– UNSCIENTIFIC BULLSHIITE]

PIGS DON’T HAVE TO BE NON-FLYING

“we’re gonna we’re gonna learn more about the nature of these experiences and who knows, i mean there may be a way [don’t forget “can”, “might”, and “could”] to do this with uh you know electro uh cranial stimulation you know, or or you know, other kinds of manipulations.”

JP: “I’m going to object to that just for a second, well, and I have a specific reason you know because i i think that’s uh uh a careful argument and an appropriate one, but i don’t think your data support it

[compare Charles Stang’s quote to RG that the mystics writings archive of experiences doesn’t support RG’s positive-only misconception of “mysticism”]

JP: “because you just told me that even the experienced meditators, for them it’s a qualitative transformation.

“and so you think i’m and so you

“you’ve already got a population [experienced meditators] that have been using disciplined technology, right, and good and good for them, you know

“Eliade believed that the shamanic transformation in its pure form wasn’t drug-mediated

“but i think it looks to me like,

“i have great respect for Eliade

“i learned a tremendous amount from him i think i don’t think the evidence supports that claim [the Great, Non-Drug Shamans of Yore]”

JP continues:

“i think the psychedelics are doing something that is in addition to what disciplined practice can–

“i mean who knows what happens if you practice for 35 years let’s say and that’s all you do

“but, but i’m–

[2:10:00]

“It isn’t obvious to me that this can be duplicated on the non-chemical front.”

RG:

“Oh let’s see , i i don’t disagree agree with you, I mean,

“This is the most powerful intervention we have for uh, for creating at high probability these kinds of ex– experiences; we don’t– nothing comes close to it.

JP:

“Well and there’s an intensity issue too, right; it’s not just probability, but also intensity.

RG:

“Yeah no absolutely, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to refine this further, and that there might not be another way to do it.

JP:

“Right, it also doesn’t mean that disciplined practice is not advisable and that caution isn’t the appropriate byword.”

Maybe There Can/ Might/ Could/ May Be Some Way to Avoid Awful Crutch of Psilocybin

Griffiths: Science Says Maybe Might Pigs Can Fly and Maybe There Can/ Might/ Could/ May Be Some Way to Avoid Awful Crutch of Psilocybin

My condemnation here is THIS IS NOT SCIENCE, the sheer conjecture that there is conceivable some unknown HYPOTHETICAL replacement for psychedelics.

SHEER CONJECTURE IS NOT SCIENCE. And the statement “Maybe non-drug psychedelics exist”, coming from a scientist, does not make that a scientific statement; it is merely a conjecture that anyone could make, same as saying:

“As a scientist, I’m pointing out that maybe pigs can/might/could/can fly, and maybe the sun will rise in the west”.

See Sabine Hossenfelder on such hollow pseudoscience conjecture, which is what passes for “Science” today.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sabine+hossenfelder
She’s a superdeterminist (= eternalism).

Other Methods Can/ Could/ Might/ May Produce Exact Same Effects as Psilocybin

con’t from above:

[2:10:40]

RG:

“yeah yeah but there you know there could be other physiological interventions you know that aren’t aren’t psychedelic uh drugs aren’t you know serotonin 2a uh agonists so all i’m all i’m scoping out is that this is going to continue to unfold uh scientifically

“just but to to get back to the the implications so so these experiences are…”

Video: Parallels of long-term meditation and psilocybin use | Roland Griffiths (Jan. 19, 2017)

Griffiths is an absolutely dedicated advocate and cheerleader of meditation. Non-drug meditation is Griffiths’ god, his standard of truth.

It is simply a given for Griffiths that non-drug meditation is the gold standard of reference.

He also takes a conventional narrative-driven view on non-drug mysticism.

Mysticism and meditation are Griffiths’ New Age religion, and after this Dec 2016 vid, 4 years later, his partner Matthew Johnson said this brand of spirituality has gone unchecked too long, and Johnson repudiated his partner’s brand of spirituality, in the Dec. 2020 article Consciousness, Religion, and Gurus: Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine, against the new religion of Griffithsism.

The religion of Griffithism is hardly “psychedelic spirituality”, given the way Griffiths in inverted fashion makes his notion and assumption-set about non-drug mysticism and non-drug meditation his false standard by which to “justify” and “praise” Psilocybin in a way that’s an insult to Psilocybin.

Griffiths diminishes Psilocybin while acting as if he’s elevating it almost up to the lofty standard set by his fantasized non-drug mysticism and non-drug meditation as if those had any authenticity — as if Psilocybin weren’t the source and the measure of authenticity by which non-drug mysticism and non-drug meditation should be found to be fake and fraudulent, usurpers of the throne that rightfully is Psilocybin’s.

When Griffiths praises or defends Psilocybin, he attempts to make Meditation the foundation for authenticity of Psilocybin – getting their relationship upside down.

Meditation’s respectability comes from its derivation from Psilocybin.

Parallels of long-term meditation and psilocybin use | Roland Griffiths
Jan. 19, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS54HMaQSGg –

1:50 “We think of meditation as the tried and true path of exploration of the nature of the mind, it’s this methodology that’s been developed over thousands of years to turn the attention inwards and watch one’s own mental processes”

– as if meditation didn’t come from psilocybin. Fake meditation is non-drug.

Authentic meditation, the gold standard reference that’s definitive of what authentic meditation is, is psilocybin-based meditation, that recognizes that the origin of meditation is psilocybin.

Machine transcription:

“A lot of it is mindfulness.

“We have overrepresentation from Buddhist traditions and vipassana could be one of those traditions.

“And so during that study, people come into our session room.

“We have them do series of meditations throughout the day.

“And when they get psilocybin, so we’re very interested in how the phenomenology of those experiences change.

“We’re comparing it to placebo.

“We’re looking at pre and post neuroimaging to see…looking for brain changes, and preliminarily, we’re seeing day-after changes which is exciting and gets to this whole issue of neuroplasticity.

“And we also have a condition in which we actually administer psilocybin to people in the scanner.

“So we’re looking at meditation when people are on, in this case, a pretty low dose of psilocybin.

“And our interest there in meditation is that we think of meditation as kind of the tried-and-true path for exploration of the nature of mind.

“I mean, that’s really what it is, is that this is methodology that’s been developed over thousands of years to turn the attention inward and watch one’s own mental processes and become familiar with the way mind works, how it’s constructed, and then through that process, very often, people… I hesitate to say gain control, but in effect, they can change the repertoire with which the brain is activated.

“They can watch thoughts come up.

“They can release thoughts in a way that someone who’s unpracticed with meditation is much…”

“So it’s an investigation of the nature of mind.”

[“mind”: Griffiths’ research partner Matthew Johnson wrote against that word usage, Johnson declared a breakaway from Griffiths’ spirituality:]
Consciousness, Religion, and Gurus: Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine
Matthew Johnson
Dec. 2020 (when I was finishing the main part of decoding the Eadwine image)
The “Parallels” video is Dec 2016 – 4 years later, Johnson wrote against Giffiths’ spirituality.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33860187/
ACS Pharmacol Transl Sci.
2020 Dec 16; 4(2):578-581.

“And similarly, I’ve come to think of psilocybin as also [only if combined with meditation] a convergent methodology for investigation of the nature of mind.

“It’s the meditation on steroids, if you will because there’s such abrupt shift of the nature of consciousness that it wakes people up to the extent to which kind of their normative cognitive processes or the normative way they hold reality is just one way of holding reality.

“And so there can be something shockingly interesting about that.

“However, psilocybin is not a substitution for meditation because it doesn’t lead to any stability of the awareness state.”

MEDITATION IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PSILOCYBIN

“So we would say that meditation is kind of the tried-and-true way of stabilizing the nature of awareness and coming to understand mind, and psilocybin might be the crash course in that.”

My posting:
Roland Griffiths and Jordan Peterson – Psychology of Psychedelics
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/10/29/roland-griffiths-and-jordan-peterson-psychology-of-psychedelics/

Article “Transcending and Transforming Psychedelics” About Harvard Webinar Series

https://hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/11/04/transcending-and-transforming-psychedelics

“In the first event of the series, Charles M. Stang, CSWR Director and Professor of Early Christian Thought, hosted Dr. Roland Griffiths of John Hopkins University, perhaps the leading researcher into the healing possibilities of psilocybin.

“Stang pushed Griffiths on how his studies seem to sanitize mystical experiences by defining them as profoundly moving encounters with a loving, transcendent source, and sidelining harrowing experiences of the divine as abysmal, dark, and even terrifying.

“Stang remarks: “This is where the history of religion is important, because it is shot through with the full archive of experiences. Religions know how to deal with harrowing experiences of God as an abyss because, guess what, people regularly have experiences of God as an abyss. And communities have to hold that, have to help people work with those experiences.”

And no, the bunk and half-assed, half-baked CEQ does not cover these actual altered state experiences, but replaces them by ordinary-state “Grief”, a reductionism, a category error.

Griffithsism, Reduction of Altered State to Social Domain, Ineffabilism Mysticism, New Age Meditationism – Hallmarks of Boomerism

Defining ‘Boomerism’ as a Noxious Dead-End Set of Narratives

I need to develop what “Boomerism” means to me or could mean.

(Bracket aside objections about generation-premised criticisms.)

Boomerism: Weakly informed by Psychedelics; thoroughly compromised to insult Psychedelics, constantly damning psychedelics with self-defeating faint praise.

The Boomer paradigm of comparing psychedelics to their precious god meditation is based on Boomers’ ludicrous levels of self-certainty about their god, which is non-drug meditation.

If anyone pays any attention to mysticism, it’s taken as a law of the universe given directly from God to you that of course no mystic ever used Psilocybin; the idea is literally unthinkable, except to Dan Merkur, but even Merkur’s thinking is limited and self-limiting here.

See Also

Meditation Is Bunk – It Is Pushed Solely to Eliminate Psychedelics
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/12/17/meditation-is-bunk-and-is-pushed-solely-to-eliminate-psychedelics/

Best section/quotes:
Idea Development page 15
Section heading:
Peterson Busts Griffiths for Self-Contradiction
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/09/03/idea-development-page-15/#Peterson-Busts-Griffiths-for-Self-Contradiction
Section copied to the present page February 22, 2023.

Above that is a related section:
Idea Development page 15
Section heading:
Jordan Peterson Roland Griffiths Interview
https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/09/03/idea-development-page-15/#Peterson-Griffiths-Interview
Section copied to the present page February 22, 2023.