This debate in the field, about right conduct as a psychedelic session guide, is:
Shouldn’t we delete all mystical and spiritual elements, in order to give a pure and neutral trip session guide role?
Any frame that you impose on the poor client is inherently bad, and your job is to avoid imposing any frame.
Be neutral and scientific and pure.
The Egodeath theory is bad and inconsiderate, because it asserts and imposes a particular, arbitrary metaphysical frame.
A proper guide should provide no frame, or have the client set the frame.
= control-seizure panic
🌳🍄😊⚡️☸️😱😫😵🪐🐉🚪🌌💎😲🐍🧊🪨🌳🐍🍄😇🏆
The Article
Consciousness, Religion, Gurus– the Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine
4 pages:
Too-Neat Categories; the Dragon Will Still Eat Your Clinic
Are you using this Psilocybin session for therapy, or are you using this for recreation, or are you using this for religion, or are you using this for philosophy, or are you using this for psychonaut exploration, or are you using this as cognitive science research?
Johnson writes:
“my recommendations only relate to the administration of psychedelics in science and medicine; they do not relate to the use of psychedelics by religions“
Simply hermetically separate therapeutic vs. religious use of Psilocybin. 🤷♂️
Web Search for the Article
Article About the Article
The Pitfalls and Challenges of Psychedelic Medicine
Author Video About the Article
url https://youtu.be/2uiLxUmD3I4
Article: Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety
Johnson, M.W., Richards, W.A., Griffiths, R.R. (2008).
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056407/
Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22, 603-620.
Like Griffiths’ Challenging Experiences Questionnaire, this article has no real awareness of the main experience, the threat of loss of control.
Michelle Janikian’s 2019 book Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion has the correct focus on the problem of the threat of loss of control. Excerpts:
Standard Hazy Trip Advice on Surrender to the Shadow, Trust, Submit, and Let Go of Control
Griffiths’ articles seem like dated affectation, a pose that seemed marketable for 2008, but entirely inadequate and out of touch with the problem. His CEQ:
Charles Stang Video Webpage “Video: What is Psychedelic Chaplaincy?”
https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/03/08/video-what-psychedelic-chaplaincy
Video Webpage Transcription – Excerpts About the Article
“here’s the article that some of you have been referring to.
“And here’s a quote that I think actually makes a really, really good case for psychedelic chaplaincy.
Matthew Johnson wrote:
“a little-discussed danger at play in psychedelic research, and one that will surely become apparent if psychedelics are approved as medicines.
“This danger is the scientists and clinicians will be imposing their personal religious or spiritual beliefs on the practice of psychedelic medicine.”
/ quote
Stang group’s discussion:
“the paper that you brought up was published recently, and I would encourage people in the audience to read it.
“It was written by Matthew Johnson, who’s a leading psychedelic researcher at Johns Hopkins, and it’s called “Consciousness, Religion, Gurus– the Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine.”
“the problem of the intersection of religion and psychedelics that Matt is doing, his proposed solution to that problem, and whether or not you agree with his proposed solution of how we can make–
“how we can make peace with the inherently spiritual nature of psychedelics.”
Cybermonk Comments
This is the ol’ great Buddha statue debate in the psychedelic clinic therapy room … related to the Great Question of Newage or Classical styling of music or framing.
You could falsely accuse the Egodeath theory of oppressing the voyager/ client by pushing a particular metaphysical frame, instead of … what, “being neutral”?
I turned that argument against the accuser; the argument is a functional self-contradiction and is malpractice, it turns out, and is actually inflicting harm, failing to do your basic job as a psychedelic clinic session guide.
More strongly than anyone could ever accuse me, I aggressively accuse other people of:
How dare you suggest to the client that they should “submit” and “surrender” and “give up their freedom to allow the experience to drive them” – you are supposed to empower 💪 the client and amplify their ego power empowerment freedom.
Stand on your left leg harder, no matter the fact that psychotic control seizure is thereby produced.
Never mind that the wrath of the gods is invoked by the client’s sitting on that ego-steering throne, and the client’s ship is sinking in a storm, thanks to your supportive empowerment of the client.
Never mind that; plow ahead! You’re supposed to empower 💪⚡️the client, no matter what, and reify their existing, untransformed expectations and preconceptions.
Your role as a psychedelic guide is to fulfill the client’s wishes, of how control and time and psychedelics and the mind works.
That is the proper, neutral, and ethically good thing to do, which is pure of any spiritual or religious belief.
You are a terrible person for suggesting that the poor client, who is a victim of you, … you should have delivered them just vague freewill fog, or just shrugged instead,
You should feebly and non-directively ask the client: “I am your psychedelic guide today – how would you like me to guide you?”
Stang Panel Con’t
“Do we start to associate those type of experiences with that religious symbolism [infamous infernal Buddha statue] and the traditions and all the connotations and ideas that come with that?
“And I think to his point, there is a problem here, especially because we also know that set and setting are so incredibly important.
“You might even call– and repeating Ido Hartogshon’s theory here, psychedelics placebo enhancers.
“So to what extent are the flight instructions not some sort of descriptive tool, but actually, they’re a primer for a particular experience?”
[while posing as if “neutral” and “pure” of any “religious or spiritual or metaphysical belief”]
“people in America tend to have more mystical experiences, … due to the fact that there’s an emphasis on mystical experiences.
“There’s the use of the mystical experience questionnaire [MEQ], which comes from a very particular way of gauging and assessing what a mystical experience is.
“It kind of primes people that are about to have a psychedelic experience to think about certain questions.”
“what Matthew Johnson is basically saying,
“even the more subtle aspects of our guidance as therapists could deeply influence someone.
“[Our panel advocates] existential positionality, this deep, spiritual reflection on your own nature being spirituality. [mystobabble -cm]
“But rather than going with this, he proposes a secular approach.
“And he then also goes on to continue to say,
“the secular is basically what we can empirically verify.
“I’m not sure … about this equation of the secular with that which can be verified empirically through science.
“But there is so much that we don’t know, that going by that, it’s a very meager definition, I think, of secularism.
“it doesn’t really address any of the concerns.
“it even naively suggests that if we just would wear a white coat and strip all– everything that kind of even smells remotely like meaning, we’ll be fine.
“it’s a naive idea of what– that secular would be a suitable approach to this.
“everything that we do is endowed with meaning, to a certain extent.
“it’s better to be honest about that and forthcoming about that, and reflect on the ontological assumptions in our psychotherapeutic approaches and models, and then have another conversation, but be transparent.
“We can then start to work with informed consent.
[to cater to the client/voyager’s spiritual desires -cm]
“We can start to do spiritual assessment which is client-centered, rather than based on someone’s personal background.
“he is using the word secular when the word interfaith might be more appropriate, if we include in interfaith, for example, a rationalist, empiricist view.
“That is arguably one commitment among many.
“it’s frustrating to see the medical model being positioned as the position of no position, and everyone else [as biased and pushing some arbitrary spiritual frame].
“I agree with you. It’s an important paper, and I would encourage everyone to read it.”
“That’s the other sense of presence for me, is being sort of connected to something, but being conscious of what that is
“not using vague terms that Matthew Johnson refers to that some therapists have been using that he calls New Age terms that are vague, and we assume everyone knows what it means to say that
I’m in a unitive state, or
I’m having a mystical experience”
“to have really a well-cultivated sense of what that is, and to be skillful in knowing when the presence that I’m bringing into a room, maybe I’m becoming alienated from that.
“And so then I can bring myself back to a more spacious, compassionate, loving response for the person that I’m with, and knowing how to navigate spaces where we can easily be thrown off.
“psychedelic experiences are very powerful.
“people go away into the vast territories of human experience, and so to have a well-navigated landscape, and also a practice that orients us to distress and to joy and affection.”
[I like the “well-navigated landscape” image; I have mapped the central feature of Mythemeland: the control transformation gate, aka the shadow. -cm]
“some of that is developed in psychotherapeutic practice, but this dimension of it that is the spiritual and religious experience may not be always.
[… be developed, though some clients need it to be].
“Matthew Johnson– I would love to see a chaplain specialist on that team, a spiritual care professional to consult with that group to provide this kind of insight and wisdom to round out the [actually spiritual] experience that people are having with really very skilled and highly skilled clinicians.
[“alleged pure, neutral scientist therapists”]
Provide a pure, non-biased, neutral Psilocybin experience
“within human experience there’s the seduction of the pure– that somehow we can get to a pure experience, whether that’s purely objective, which is part of what I hear Matthew Johnson arguing for, which there’s no such thing.
“you want to give me a hard time about myth. That’s a myth.”
[By ‘accusation of myth’ & the above retort, I think that speaker is referring to the proposed, allegedly – but naively proposed – “pure”, “metaphysically neutral” ideal: that the clinic should not have any mythemes; no Buddha figures; no Christian music eg Bach. -cm]
“And so recognizing the very fact that we are in someone else’s space, that changes the experience that the person has, simply because we’re there.
[as a meddling, non-neutral, Guide/ biased interpretation-suggester imposing our own arbitrary metaphysical frame on the poor hapless Client/ victim -cm]
“So there’s a piece of self-awareness that’s really important for the person who enters that space as a care provider, as a caregiver, and a recognition that the very fact that you’re showing up is going to change things.
[care provider: psilocybin session Guide]
“So in light of that, where do you go from there?
“And knowing that within this work of psychedelic experience, just what can be opened up.
[eg arbitrary frames]
“that raises important questions for the training of people who would be in that space, not only for the self-awareness piece, but being able, then, to sit with people as you inadvertently open up things with them that you never intended to open up, but because you are there, that’s what’s happened.”
[one voyager got caught in a bad thought loop, and the Guide was losing it]
“[A psychedelic Guide needs] a profound and deep embodied sense of understanding the psychedelic landscape and experiences and all the different type of iterations of those experiences, and being able to be a very calm, reassuring presence.
“And then especially, not doing too much.”
Guides Should Teach; the Naive Myth of the Metaphysically Neutral Option & Unsustainability of the Exaggerated Principle/ Doctrine of “Don’t Be Too Directive”
It is objectively better to teach the Egodeath theory than for the guide to mutely & unhelpfully “reassure” the client who is being pulled into the control-transformation vortex.
A failure to help in giving birth prevents birth and causes trauma. That is malpractice and basic incompetence.
Goal: complete the innate transformation, efficiently. Maximize success and minimize trauma. Neutrality is a myth and unhelpful; harmful.
Are you going to claim that you are a midwife, but just sit there while the baby is struggling, and do nothing?!
And refuse to tell the client what’s going on and how to succeed in their passage?
I entertained the proposal that guides should not tell low-dose beginner clients the truth; about the mind’s built-in, designed-in, innate mental model transformation from possibilism to eternalism – and that position blew up!
Withholding Transcendent Knowledge turns out to be the most indefensible position in the world, and completely not actionable! Outright malpractice, in fact!
Make yourself useful!! Assert yourself, help out, for Christs sake!
Article Excerpt
Matthew Johnson wrote:
Heading:
“INAPPROPRIATE INTRODUCTION OF RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL BELIEFS OF INVESTIGATORS OR CLINICIANS
“spiritual” can mean different things. Here I am referring to supernatural belief systems or frameworks that are not empirically based,
[but see Ken Wilber’s essay Eye to Eye; define ’empirical observation’ -cm]
“[social mundane] qualities can and should be encourage by clinicians conducting psychedelic therapy.
“The concern surrounds the former category of supernatural or religious beliefs.
“For today’s psychedelic scientists and clinicians, frameworks of concern are likely to resemble a loosely held eclectic collection of various beliefs drawn piecemeal from
mystical traditions,
Eastern religions, and
indigenous cultures, perhaps best described by the term
“new age,” although they could come from any religious or spiritual belief system.
“It is important to operate instead from a secular framework that is nonetheless open to working with patients or participant of any religious/spiritual background.”
Cybermonk:
That’s like how the Egodeath theory stands on two distinct legs, integrated.
The Egodeath theory is based on non-metaphor direct speaking (the Core theory).
That clearly defined model then is able to separately explain analogies in religious myth (the Mytheme theory), by virtue of the two sub-theories being kept distinct.
Don’t make vague mystic myth the foundation for a scientific explanatory model.
Johnson:
“This is in alignment with the best practices of clinical psychology and other mental health professions that recognize the importance of strong rapport with patients, religious/ spiritual tolerance, and the importance to mental health of having meaning in life.
“Clinicians and scientists should not introduce their own nonempirically supported beliefs.
“It is inappropriate to introduce meta-religious beliefs such as perennialism.
“perennialism is the notion that the major religious traditions point toward a core truth.”
Psychedelic Cognitive Science and Developmental Psychology Is Not a Perennialist (Religious Myth) Foundation
Johnson’s above statement against holding a perennialism foundation isn’t how to frame the Egodeath theory.
The Egodeath theory is primarily framed as an explanation of how the mind works when exposed to the loose cognitive association binding state through psilocybin.
This developmental innate structure built into the mind then explains world religious myth.
Religious myth describes by analogy, psilocybin eternalism transformation.
Johnson:
“It is also not appropriate to present nonempirically supported descriptions of psychedelic effects as known truths for participants, e.g., instructing participants that a psychedelic session will inform them about the nature of the mind.”
Objection, hypocrites!
Every trip guidebook explains that “you need to let go, you need to give over control, you need to submit, you need to surrender, and that is how to restore control stability.”
It would be insane malpractice to not inform the tripper of this folk practical wisdom technique.
And explain clearly the scientific model, along with the now-decoded referent of religious myth.
I have thought it through and wow!, my position is extremely easy to defend, and the other, opposite position is completely impossible to defend for even a moment;
Arguing for witholding Transcendent Knowledge from a Psilocybin user fails catastrophically in 20 different ways.
I would feel sorry for anyone who tries to uphold the position that we should withhold gnosis and withhold transcendent knowledge from the poor client who is undergoing control seizure transformation turmoil.
When you know the answer and solution and explanation – articulate wisdom – it would be insane & unjustifiable to withhold Transcendent Knowledge from someone who needs it.
It would be malpractice not to teach the client the Egodeath theory, to recognize systematically and efficiently that this controlled turmoil is shaped and recognized as eternalism transformation.
Not beating around the bush, withholding explanation – that would be sinister and paranoia-inducing.
Johnson:
“Conveying such descriptions is concerning at a general level because patients may take such descriptions as scientific fact rather than opinion when coming from scientific or clinical authorities.
“They are also concerning because if participants do come away from sessions with their own such conclusions from the effects then it is more scientifically interesting if such notions were not directly fed to participants from the treatment team.
“In addition to being mindful about the scope of concepts introduced to participants, scientists and clinicians should not include religious icons in the session room or other clinical space.
“It has unfortunately become fashionable and commonplace for statues of Buddha to be present in psychedelic session treatment rooms.”
I am against Buddha statues, like people are against simply assuming “everyone loves U2”.
I am against non-drug meditation insifar as it’s employed as a strategy to get rid of Psilocybin and ego death.
Non-drug meditation is a recovery days activity.
Historically, meditation comes from Psilocybin.
Meditation is being abused, to perpetuate delusion, when meditation is used as a pretext to avoid and substitute for and eliminate and replace Psilocybin.
– Cybermonk
Johnson:
“In addition to other concerns about conflating religious beliefs with empirically based clinical practice, the introduction of such religious icons into clinical practice unnecessarily alienates some people from psychedelic medicine, e.g., atheists, Christians, and Muslims. “
Retort:
His view is biased against any particular groups.
That is not a sustainable argument that he makes: it is naïve neutrality, through deleting everything, as if religious freedom dictates deleting all religion. -Cybermonk
“It will ultimately interfere with the mainstream adoption of these treatments to help the greatest number of appropriate individuals if they are approved as treatments, e.g., coverage by insurance and government medical programs.
“scientists and clinicians can certainly have their own religious or nonempirically based beliefs.
“they should not bring up these personal beliefs and insert them into therapeutic practice.”
Retort:
On what basis do you declare and label certain professional practices as neutral and scientific but you assert other practice is a spiritual or religious then what do you do with Ken Wilber’s theory which is developmental psychology psychospiritual?
I don’t bring religious or spiritual beliefs, I bring a model of mental development in the Psilocybin altered state which converts from possibilism-thinking to eternalism-thinking.
Religious myth is analogies that describe this mental developmental innate process.
This is how the mind is designed, and religion describes how the mind is designed.
The well-formed, intelligent, scientific (= directly expressed), correct, true nature of religious beliefs is about cyber-space-time mental models and how they are transformed in the psychedelic state.
This is not about “religious beliefs” as Johnson misconceives the term; this is about cognitive science of mental development, which is explained by religious myth by analogy. -Cybermonk
Johnson:
“It also does not mean that participants should not bring their own belief systems to their therapy.”
“people having psychedelic sessions touch on the “big questions,” e.g., the nature of reality and the nature of self.
“Patient beliefs often play a large role in her or his meaning making from sessions.
“Just as with the practice of secular clinical psychology or psychiatry, a patient can certainly bring up religious beliefs and concepts …”
Printing and Debating the Article
Johnson’s article has other points too.
The article is not long, but it is dense with a lot of high-traction points that are worth engaging and debating and clarifying our thoughts.
The Egodeath theory 