This expose amounts to showing the uncontrollability of the Spirit of Psilocybin and makes a mockery of the efforts of psychedelic beginner Science to understand and control the loose cognitive state.
If only they had the Egodeath theory — the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism — this would have been prevented. 😑 Or not. 🤷♂️
This page corrects my slightly off memory, I thought the escapee made it upstairs to talk with a priest, but actually he was on his way to a dean.
That changes slightly the backdrop for my joke about rooting for the escapee from the psychedelic experiment, April 20, 1962.
Huston Smith wrote:
“Realizing that he was overpowered – barely, for under the influence his strength was like Samson’s – John, tightly flanked, submitted to being walked back to the chapel where Wally [Walter Pahnke] injected an antidote. [maybe thorazine/CPZ]
“Immediately he was back in his right mind but with total amnesia as to what had occurred.
“It took twenty-four hours for all the pieces of the episode to come back to him and be fitted into place.
“God, it turned out, had chosen him to announce to the world the dawning millennium of peace and good will.
“(As often happens in such cases, the actual wording of the message made little sense to normal ears.)
“In his homily in the chapel, John broke the news to our congregation, but he needed to get it to the world at large, which was what caused him to leave the chapel.
“When, walking down Commonwealth Avenue, he saw the plaque announcing “Dean of the College of Liberal Arts” by the entrance to 745 Commonwealth Avenue, it occurred to him that deans have influence, so if he could get to that dean, that dean would call a press conference that would complete John’s mission.
“The postman’s packet was for the dean, he felt sure, so if he attached himself to it, it would take him to his targeted dean.”
Don’t run away from the psychedelic experiment room confinement
It would be irresponsible to joke about encouraging volunteers for 3 dried grams worth of Golden Teacher (= 30 mg psil.) to escape from their confinement to eyeshades, headphones, and entrapping blanket, where you are only permitted to get up to use the bathroom and even then, the door is kept ajar.
Guidelines for Safety – Johnson/ Griffiths/ Williams
Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety Johnson M, Richards W, Griffiths R. 2008 Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22, 603-620. 22(6):603-20. doi: 10.1177/0269881108093587. Epub 2008 Jul 1. PMID: 18593734; PMCID: PMC3056407. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056407/
At certain increasingly sketchy web hosts, even if you don’t touch your files at all, the host company makes sure to degrade and corrupt your bits over time. No wonder I set up WordPress.
WordPress has actually been reliable, after I figured out certain things.
Egodeath.com’s host’s reliability plummeted off a cliff re: reliability, as Max Freakout knows. They messed up my files and URLs behavior. 😠
todo: Fix the defaulting around “index.html” for the link that’s in Brown & Brown 2019 article pointing to a section of the Egodeath.com home page.
to test: amptone.com amptone.com/index.html egodeath.com egodeath.com/index.html
Hoffman, M. (1985–2007b). Gallery: Christian mushroom-trees. Retrieved from http://www.egodeath.com/WassonEdenTree.htm#_Toc135889185 – correctly goes to Gallery: Christian Mushroom Trees, but the two links are fragmented in the Brown article (web view & PDF).
Admin Settings Page Shows Exact UTC Actual Day & Time of Post
update March 19, 2023:
I determined in past couple days, apparently I’m shown a datetime stamp in Editing view that gives the precise UTC day & minute of initial posting of a “post” page.
Also it seems that:
If I post after 5pm, the URL and the date shown on rendered page adds 1 day, so negatively misrepresents when I posted.
If I post before 5pm, the rendered date is accurate/correct.
Purpose
Official posting for scholarly records. — Cybermonk 11:40 pm Jan. 17, 2023
I always [no, apparently only if I post after 5pm] see tomorrow’s date when I post a page.
I don’t know the time zone difference, but if I create and post a page on Monday, the URL and displayed date show Tuesday.
This must be factored into account.
I might write actual date time at top of each page. My manually written dates inside a page are more precise than the URL and displayed date, generally subtract 1 day, is what I’ve been seeing.
The roughly per-day URL is good to have, but off by 1.
If a post says June 3, I posted it June 2 – but don’t know the details.
Guidelines for Danger
Griffiths 2008 Guidelines for Safety. Hopkins trip room.
Article: Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056407/ Matthew “Lose the Buddha statue” Johnson William “O.G.” Richards Roland “Don’t Dread DED; Grief Instead” Griffiths 2008 Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22, 603-620.
Old Hat by 1962, Tail End of 1950s Heyday of Scientific Psychedelic Session Research
Was there scientific study of ergot in the 1950s that was similar to the sessions done by Pahnke 1962, Richards 1975, Dittrich 1975, Griffiths 2006, & Johnson? Pahnke was the first to do what?
What was new with the Pahnke Richards Dittrich Griffiths sessions/ research & psychometrics?
Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness Harvard University Press Walter Pahnke, June 1963 Psilosophy.info – Full text of Pahnke’s 1963 dissertation book, created from MAPS scans of the typed dissertation: http://en.psilosophy.info/drugs_and_mysticism.html –
“Within a week all subjects had completed a 147-item questionnaire which had been designed to measure phenomena of the typology of mysticism on a qualitative, numerical scale.”
“Acknowledgments: The author wishes to express his deep gratitude for the support and encouragement of many members of the academic community who made this study possible in a troubled [why write ‘troubled’ in June 1963?] but promising area of research. Particular appreciation is extended to Dr. Hans Hofmann, who was a continuing source of counsel and inspiration, and to Dr. Timothy Leary, who assisted with the execution of the experiment. Through the guidance of the thesis committee [The Committee on Higher Degrees in History and Philosophy of Religion], the author’s perspectives have been clarified and deepened.”
Preface begins with a false dichotomy: “This dissertation was an empirical study designed to investigate the similarities and differences between experiences described by mystics and those induced by psychedelic (or mind-manifesting) drugs such as d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, and mescaline.”
Did you go up to the mountaintop where God told you this given fact, that mystics didn’t use psychedelics?
How does everyone know so much, with so much certainty, about “the traditional, non-drug methods of the mystics”?
The dissertation book is a: Thesis presented to The Committee on Higher Degrees in History and Philosophy of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Religion and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June, 1963.
“The Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) was developed by Pahnke (1963, 1969) as a tool for the evaluation of single mystical experiences occasioned by hallucinogens. The MEQ is based on Stace’s conceptual framework (1960)…” – MacLean 2012, Factor Analysis of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: A Study of Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin Book: Walter Stace, 1960: Mysticism and Philosophy. When was SOCQ?
Good Friday Experiment/ March Chapel Experiment Friday, April 20, 1962, Walter Pahnke, Advisors Timothy Leary
A recent article lists the date; I bet they got the date from my wikipedia edit.
I shouldn’t have had to spend 15 minutes trying in vain to find the date mentioned in articles about the experiment; I gave up and used a calendar app page to look up the date myself purely from the calendar, not from any article about Pahnke’s experiment bc NONE of those articles, in 15 minutes of searching, gave the damn date!
Every single article or webpage, in 15 minutes of research, said “Good Friday of 1962”; not one of them gave the day number.
I’m surprised at this pattern, also seen in bad citations like “William James, Varieties, 2005″. or “mid Xth Century” have to translate to normal, standardized, specific date eg year number.
The Psychedelic Experience Scale (PES) (revived by Stocker 2024)
The Revival of the Psychedelic Experience Scale: Revealing Its Extended-Mystical, Visual, and Distressing Experiential Spectrum with LSD and Psilocybin Studies Stocker, Kurt, Matthias Hartmann, Laura Ley, Anna M Becker, Friederike Holze, and Matthias E. Liechti. 2024. Journal of Psychopharmacology 38: 80–100. [CrossRef] [PubMed] Cole’s article says about that work, “a helpful review of the history of the MEQ from its earliest complete form in 1975 until the present version“
Counseling, peak experiences and the human encounter with death: An empirical study of the efficacy of DPT-assisted counseling in enhancing quality of life of persons with terminal cancer and their closest family members William Richards 1975 PhD diss. UCLA
The following is an instance of the MEQ43 questionnaire, lacking the SOCQ’s other, 57 distractor items. PDF includes categories and their items. States of Consciousness Questionnaire [SOCQ] and Pahnke-Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire [MEQ] https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jfkihlstrom/ConsciousnessWeb/Psychedelics/States-of-Consciousness-Questionnaire-and-Pahnke.pdf It lists 7 categories (like MEQ30) not 4 (like MEQ43), but it’s easy to understand why they’d do that, if they are going to present any categories; MEQ43 collapses 4 together into 1.
That PDF lists 43 items, per top of PDF:
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)
Deeply-Felt Positive Mood (7 items)
That PDF says at bottom: 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). http://csp.org/psilocybin/ http://www.csp.org/psilocybin/Hopkins-CSP-Psilocybin2006.pdf http://files.csp.org/Psilocybin/Hopkins-CSP-Psilocybin2006.pdf – bottom has the grouped questions – but only the 43 MEQ questions, no trace of the 57 distractor questions, of which CEQ initial pool selected 24, omitting 33 (which I haven’t found yet).
APZ (Dittrich 1975)
Dittrich A (1975) Zusammenstellung eines fragebogens (APZ) zur erfassung abnormer psychischer zustände [Construction of a questionnaire (APZ) for assessing abnormal mental states] Z Klin Psychol Psychiatr Psychother 23: 12–20.
The 3 O/A/V dimensions of APZ were identified / published by Dittrich 1985.
v1 O + A + V = how many items? From memory:
13 22 +14 = 49 items, but often the G-ASC’s etiology-indep. items are added: + 23 = 72 items (or 49 items) in the OAV of 1985/1993 for APZ 1975.
That led to creating/publishing an improved questionnaire called “OAV” in 1994, 66 items (simpler tallies b/c no etiology-dependent items).
Where did the 23 G-ASC items go? Hypoth: They were merged into the O/ A/ V dimensions to bloat them out. taking Ocean from 13 to 27 in ’94, taking Angst/Dread from 22 to 21 in ’94, taking Ocean from 14 to 18 in ’94.
Maybe that is how the 72-item O/A/V 1985/1993 became the 66-item OAV 1994.
Hypothesis: Maybe the 158-72=86 etiology-dependent items of APZ were separated into the BETA questionnaire, which became dimension 4 & 5 later: Auditory, and Reduction of Vigilance.
O/A/V for APZ 1975 (Dittrich 1985)
International study on altered states of consciousness (ISASC): Summary of the results Dittrich A, Vonarx S, Staub S 1985 Ger J Psychol 9: 319–339. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1986-26371-001
Dittrich in 1985 presents the O, A, V, and probably G-ASC dimensions found in APZ[158]
Dittrich A 1994 Psychological aspects of altered states of consciousness of the LSD type: Measurement of their basic dimensions and prediction of individual differences In: Pletscher A, Ladewig D, eds. 50 Years of LSD: Current Status and Perspectives of Hallucinogens: A Symposium of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, Lugano-Agno (Switzerland) October 21 and 22, 1993 New York NY: Parthenon. pp 101–118. Readable at Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=3s5vkfmXKNUC&pg=PA101
I have this printed out (it was worth producing). As valuable as CEQ printout or 11-Factors.
This isn’t OAV 1994 (66 items). As Dittrich presents, this original version of OAV for the 1975 APZ has 72 items, 3-1/2 dimensions (O/A/V & G-ASC).
Dittrich 1994 (Oct. 1993) in book 50 Years of LSD
Swiss Academy of the Medical Sciences. Proceedings of a Symposium of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, Lugano-Agno (Switzerland), October 21-22, 1993. Pharmacological and clinical research on LSD, for pharmacologists or psychiatrists. 17 contributors, 5 U.S.
Bodmer I, Dittrich A, Lamparter D. Aussergewöhnliche Bewusstseinszustände – Ihre gemeinsame Struktur und Messung [Altered states of consciousness – Their common structure and assessment]. 1994 In: Hofmann A, Leuner H, editors. Welten des Bewusstseins. Bd. 3, Experimentelle Psychologie, Neurobiologie und Chemie. Berlin, Germany: VWB; 1994. pp. 45–58.
This article is about Dittrich 1994 OAV with inflated O & V, shrunken A, in book Worlds of Consciousness, Volume 3 (German) Ocean 13 -> 27 Angst/Dread 22 -> 21 Visionary 14 -> 18 G-ASC 23 -> no longer exists distinct from the now 66 O/A/V items.
Annual journal book that in 1994 defines OAV: Worlds of Consciousness Bodmer, I., Dittrich, A. & Lamparter, D. in Welten des Bewusstseins. Bd. 3 (eds. Hofmann, A. & Leuner, H.) 45–58 (Experimentelle Psychologie, Neurobiologie und Chemie., 1994).
Annual journal book that in 1994 defines OAV: Worlds of Consciousness Bodmer, I., Dittrich, A. & Lamparter, D. in Welten des Bewusstseins. Bd. 3 (eds. Hofmann, A. & Leuner, H.) 45–58 (Experimentelle Psychologie, Neurobiologie und Chemie., 1994).
Dittrich 1998 article about OAV questionnaire [66 items] with improved (tilted positive) OAV items compared to APZ [158 items]
Dittrich A (1998) The standardized psychometric assessment of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) in humans Pharmacopsychiatry 31: 80–84. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9754838/ – paywall for PDF fulltext
5D-ASC’s Two Extra Dimensions, as a Separate “BETA” Questionnaire, Is Mentioned in 1998 Article
The BETA questionnaire measures the dimensions “Vigilance Reduction (VIR)” and “Auditive Alteration (AVE).
That 1998 mention of dimensions 4 & 5 (though as a separate, “BETA” questionnaire) corroborates Studerus’ 2010 claim that 5D-ASC data was gathered starting in 2000, not in 2006 when the 5D (German) article was published.
These dimensions are expected to be etiology-dependent. When people say APZ has 72 items in 3 main categories, they mean 158 items of APZ have 72 divided into: 13 Ocean 22 Angst 14 Dread 23 G-ASC that are etiology-independent. 72 TOTAL etiology-independent. Source: Dittrich 1993 (1994), which I have printed out.
Hypothesis: the other 158-72=86 items (the etiology-dependent items of the 1975 APZ) became the BETA questionnaire around 1988, which then became the Auditory & Reduction of Vigilance dimensions #4 and #5 of the (private in 1999) (announced in 2006) 5D-ASC.
5D-ASC Intro (Dittrich 2006, German)
Dittrich, A, Lamparter, D, Maurer, M (2006) 5D-ABZ: German garbled from pdf, see Studerus 2010: References. Try copying from the original in-browser version, instead of Adobe Acrobat. Fragebogen zur Erfassung Aussergewo¨hnlicher Bewusstseinszusta¨nde. Eine kurze Einfu¨hrung [5D-ASC: Questionnaire for the assessment of altered states of consciousness. A short introduction]. Zurich, Switzerland: PSIN PLUS.
Dittrich 2006 5D-ASC (German) Adding 2 Positive Dimensions to Reduce Negative from 1/3 to 1/5
Guidelines for Safety (Johnson 2008)
Human Hallucinogen Research: Guidelines for Safety Johnson M, Richards W, Griffiths R. 2008 Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22, 603-620. 22(6):603-20. doi: 10.1177/0269881108093587. Epub 2008 Jul 1. PMID: 18593734; PMCID: PMC3056407. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056407/
5D-ASC: Questionnaire for the assessment of altered states of consciousness. A short introduction. Dittrich, A, Lamparter, D, Maurer, M (2010) Zurich, Switzerland: PSIN PLUS.
link (good luck finding) – Unobtanium. Library.
The {evil king} sent the {hero} to obtain the 5D-ASC Intro article by Dittrich, knowing that this impossible task, {impossible for any mortal} unless {assisted by magic tools from the gods} would lead to the hero’s {death} while trying to {get the treasure} that’s {guarded by the dragon}.
Figure S2 is similar. See the important captures where I trace the shuffling shell game of question 54, for the 3 magicians to perform the Vanishing Dragon trick 🎩🪄🎩🪄🎩🪄💨🐉 🤷♂️ which made the five rival Griffiths magicians so envious, they went on to perform: the Vanishing Dread (DED) Dimension trick 🎩🪄🎩🪄🎩🪄🎩🪄🎩🪄💨😱 🤷♂️:
“In its most recent iteration, the MEQ was administered along with 57 distracter items in a 100-item instrument called the States of Consciousness Questionnaire (SOCQ) (Griffiths et al. 2006; Griffiths et al. 2008; Griffiths et al. 2011). Relevant to the present study, although the wording and number of distracter items have changed over the years, the mystical items have remained largely consistent since the inception of the MEQ (see Pahnke 1969).” – MacLean 2012
Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences (Griffiths 2006)
Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance Griffiths, Roland R.; Richards, William A.; McCann, Una; Jesse, Robert. 2006 Psychopharmacology. 2006; 187(3):268–83. [PubMed: 16826400] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16826400/
March 4, 2023 – Most of the present page fails to link to my local pages yet. But the above link is to my local page.
SOCQ/MEQ30 (MacLean 2012)
Note: Later = Smaller, thus lower down on this page. 43 items = ~1963. 30 items = ~2012.
MacLean, K. A., Leoutsakos, J.-M. S., Johnson, M. W. & Griffiths, R. R. Factor Analysis of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: A Study of Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin. J. Sci. Study Relig.51, 721–737 (2012). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23316089/
Validation of the revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire in experimental sessions with psilocybin Frederick Barrett, Mathew “No Buddha Statues” Johnson, Roland Griffiths 2015 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26442957/ – for PDF, click “FREE Full text PMC” button in upper right
The CEQ Isn’t a Real, Authentic, Legitimate, Safe, Usable, or Insight-Delivering Questionnaire
Caution, the CEQ isn’t a real questionnaire; it’s just a cross-questionnaire mockup exercise.
MEQ fails to incorporate negative mystical experences, and CEQ which is intended to cover negative instead discards most of the psychedelic-specific negative experiences.
The Studerus article about the 11-Factors q’air assumes that per Stace 1960, “negative mystical experiences” is a self-contradiction; “NO SUCH THING AS A NEGATIVE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE”.
Griffiths’ team cannot be relied on, they are too positive (mystical experiences are always rainbows & unicorns) and too ordinary-state based in the selection of items for the CEQ’s Initial Item Pool and then deleting the 64 down to 24, willy-nilly in anti-scientific arbitrary way, as proved by the lack of any real OAV Angst/Dread items or 11-Factors high-level Unpleasant category items in the final 26 questions.
The extant CEQ needs to be scrapped, it’s an unscientific scheme to eliminate authentically psychedelic negative experiences, simply DELETING 18 of 21 of Dittrich’s 1994 Dread of Ego Dissolution effects questions/items, and creating for themselves a new, Grief category — conveniently sounding like the ordinary-state couch psychotherapy Grief counseling profession of services — and gathering more questions in their new Grief category than any other category (factor).
Strategy: Eliminate all the negative psychedelics-specific distinctive state-specific effects (Volition & Control challenges; the threat of catastrophic loss of control of thinking 😱🐉🚪💎) and put the spotlight on ordinary-state-based, state-generic Grief counseling instead. BUNK!
😱🐉🚪💎🌳🐍🍄🏆😇🍄🚪⚡️🍄
The Isolation factor has 3 versions of the same Isolation effect from 3 questionnaires.
They warn not to use their bunk Paranoia factor, because one of the two questions is about aggression, not paranoia.
There are about 7 dup questions (b/c of picking equivalent items from 3 questionnaires and wanting to pad-out their 6, no make it 7 factors) in the final set of 26 items, making hash out of the defense “We had to get rid of all of Dittrich’s Angst/Dread effects to streamline the questionnaire.”
ECQ: Eternalism and Control Questionnaire (Hoffman 2022)
It is strange how this (out of print) book is treated as THE “scientific” foundation for the so-called “mystical” aspect of all of the entire psychedelic psychometrics science.
All these questionnaires stand or fall with this one book.
And if you ask too many questions, the mystical scientists fall back to James 1902.
And Huxley 1954 Doors of Perception and The Perennial Philosophy (1944).
Philosophy of Mysticism: Raids on the Ineffable (Jones 2017)
A 2017 followup book, for 1960 Stace: Mysticism and Philosophy:
Philosophy of Mysticism: Raids on the Ineffable Richard Jones, 2017
That’s probably the 1st Edition of the book that became The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach, which is associated with the Hood lifetime mystical experience questionnaire. Amazon concurs in title of that webpage: says “1st Edition”.
Interesting: I posted on Dec. 1, 2013 in the Egodeath Yahoo Group (strangely, the posting before my big “tree vs. snake” breakthrough announcement), my Amazon review of Roberts’ book, mentions Hood’s book which says Merkur says mystics used entheogens.
The Psychedelic Future of the Mind: How Entheogens Are Enhancing Cognition, Boosting Intelligence, and Raising Values Thomas Roberts http://amazon.com/o/asin/1594774595 January 2013
About Roberts’ book, my review says:
“This book — its authors — reify habitually the uncritically adopted unspoken Prohibitionist-compliant dogma, a hazy, incoherent dogma, that scholars understand how Christian mystics throughout history accessed the intense mystic altered state, and we know that they accessed it through meditation, and we know they didn’t access it through drugs.
“It is unthinkable and unwriteable by Walsh and Roberts — mis-leaders of reform — to consider the question I pose: to what extent were visionary plants used by Christians throughout history?
“Roberts contradicts the evidence he has collected: he cites the book The Psychology of Religion by Hood et al The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach (http://amazon.com/o/asin/1606233033), which states that Dan Merkur has shown in his book The Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience (http://amazon.com/o/asin/089281862X) that Jewish mystics used visionary plants.” – Cybermonk, Amazon book review
Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences (Richards 2016)
Richards started with Pahnke, helped Pahnke refine the late-1960s MEQ Mystical Experience Questionnaire, is part of the Griffiths/Hopkins/Johnson group.
“Recent clinical trials show that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations.
“Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers, for months or even years.
“But these benefits seem to be mediated by “mystical” experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern:
“do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about the metaphysical nature of reality?
“This book is the first scholarly monograph in English devoted to the philosophical analysis of psychedelic drugs.
“Its central focus is the apparent conflict between the growing use of psychedelics in psychiatry and the philosophical worldview of naturalism.
“Within the book, Letheby integrates empirical evidence and philosophical considerations in the service of a simple conclusion:
“this “Comforting Delusion Objection” to psychedelic therapy fails.
“While exotic metaphysical ideas do sometimes come up, they are not, on closer inspection, the central driver of change in psychedelic therapy.
“Psychedelics lead to lasting benefits by altering the sense of self, and changing how people relate to their own minds and lives-not by changing their beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality.
“The upshot is that a traditional conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism (the philosophical position that the natural world is all there is).
“Controlled psychedelic use can lead to genuine forms of knowledge gain and spiritual growth-even if no Cosmic Consciousness or transcendent divine Reality exists.
“Philosophy of Psychedelics is an indispensable guide to the literature for researchers already engaged in the field of psychedelic psychiatry, and for researchers-especially philosophers-who want to become acquainted with this increasingly topical field.”
Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience (Hauskeller 2022)
“In this rapidly growing area of study, this is the first volume to explore the philosophy of psychedelic experience, from a range of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives.
“In doing so, Philosophy and Psychedelics reveals just why the place of psychedelics in our societies should not be left to medical sciences alone, as psychedelic experience opens up new perspectives on fundamental philosophical questions relating to human experience, ethics, and the metaphysics of mind.
“Mapping a range of philosophical responses to the surge in studies into psychedelic drugs in the cognitive sciences, this go-to volume examines topics including
psychedelics and the role of governance;
psychedelics and mysticism;
what psychedelics can tell us about dyadic thankfulness; and
psychedelics as ways to gain new knowledge.
“Written by leading international scholars, the essays cover Western and non-Western traditions, from analytic philosophy to Zen Buddhism, and discuss a variety of hallucinogens, such as LSD, MDMA, and Ayahuasca, in order to build a much-needed bridge between the rapidly growing scientific research and the philosophy behind psychedelic experience.”
The Psychedelic Renaissance (Sessa 2012/2017)
The Psychedelic Renaissance: Reassessing the Role of Psychedelic Drugs in 21st Century Psychiatry and Society Second Edition 2017 (2012) Ben Sessa
I need a single page I can point to when I discuss questionnaires and articles about them.
Right now, references are scattered across my various pages/posts about psychedelic psychometrics questionnaires.
References from APZ page
heading retired. I copied Ref section from my APZ page to here.
References from My OAV page
heading retired. I copied Ref section from my OAV page to here.
References from My 11-Factors page
heading retired. I copied Ref section from my OAV page to here. 1 item only.
Todo
Link from each questionnaire page (eg References section) to here.
In each entry/section here, link to my corresponding questionnaire page.
Print out Griffiths 2006.
Print out Griffiths 2008.
done? Copy from the References sections at the bottom of my pages about psychedelic psychometrics questionnaires to here. Done, I think. Find any specific stragglers as needed.
done: Make a heading for each article, including the year.
The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James’s Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment Jonathan Bricklin January 2, 2016 http://amzn.com/143845628X SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology
This book and author has ties among:
Philosophy of Eternalism
Enlightenment from altered-state revelation
The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology
The Journal of Consciousness Studies
Consciousness Studies
Psychedelics in late 20th C. spirituality
Altered states
Ramesh Balsekar (no-free-will)
Benny Shanon (Cognitive Phenomenology of Ayahuasca)
Table of Contents
Commentary
Jonathan Bricklin equates “Enlightenment” with the altered-state revelation of eternalism.
Bricklin uses terms including “monism, Parmenides, eternalism”, vs. “Pluriverse”.
I purchased this book on Dec. 30, 2015 before it was available on Jan. 2, 2016.
Bricklin’s book is part of Consciousness Studies, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, & Journal of Consciousness Studies, and was reviewed in draft by Benny Shanon & Ramesh Balsekar.
This book has the key topics, like mystic experiencing of eternalism, but nothing about experience of the threat of control loss.
Anything that this book has about control cancellation that drives transformation of the mental worldmodel from possibilism to eternalism, is faintly expressed, compared to in the Egodeath theory.
Bricklin’s book The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James’s Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment (SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology), equates “enlightenment” with eternalism.
Balsekar asserted no-free-will as enlightenment, among the Ken Wilber Integral Theory crowd.
Benny Shanon = Ayahuasca from a Psychedelics Cognitive Phenomenology approach like the Egodeath theory.
This book covers various peripheral topics, and doesn’t go into the key topics deeply like the Egodeath theory does.
Such books by Sam Harris, Balsekar, Shanon, Campbell, and Bricklin don’t bring the ideas together tightly and simply, as the Egodeath theory does.
The book is keyed to Indian religious philosophy; Bricklin makes India the origin of Greece’s eternalism.
p 337 cites 1999 Kingsley’s book, for the Eastern roots of Eleatic spirituality.
I note that Dionysus’ victory parade returns “from India”.
Customer Comments
“Most neuroscientists don’t believe in free will.
The Buddha did not believe in self.
Einstein [what of Minkowski?] did not believe in time.
“Separately, these beliefs foster forlornness. But as Bricklin shows here with exceptional clarity, when they are woven together, the opposite occurs: the illusion of will, self, and time is a coherent context for the most profound spiritual experiences from ancient times to our own.”
“assembles from James hints of a reality stranger than most of us have likely ever imagined. very-readable …
“lays out a path through timelessness … a path well worth walking, not just for what it may reveal of reality, but for what it reveals about the deepest questions asked by one of humanity’s best minds, fully contextualized by cross-connections to his contemporaries, and other thinkers and researchers from ancient to present.”
Quote from Bricklin’s Book
Page 333: notes for the Eternalism chapter (15). McTaggart, 1908, 457: “Time is unreal … in all ages the belief in the unreality of time has proved singularly attractive.
“In the philosophy and religion of the East, this doctrine is of cardinal importance.
“And in the West, the same doctrine continually recurs, both among philosophers and among theologians.
“Theology never holds itself apart from mysticism for any long period, and almost all mysticism denies the reality of time.”
I took note (around 1988) that William James added his word ‘iron’. Yet I’ve had surprising trouble getting simple easy confirmation of this famous usage. This Oxford encyclopedia entry doesn’t quite have the whole phrase “iron block universe”.
I finally found a tiny bit of partial confirmation, but I thought (the past few years) it would be trivially easy to confirm James’ disparaging distinctive catch phrase casting shade on the “iron block universe”.
The ‘determinism’ article is poor: zilch conception, at least on p. 1, of eternalism, despite mentioning James’ “iron block universe”.
A fault is that even William James, as quoted in this article, defines the “iron block universe” in not eternalism terms, but merely in domino-chain sequential causality terms.
Article: Faithful excerpts condensed by Cybermonk (removed words only); see book for exact quotes:
(I need to create a page defining how I condense; define several levels of accuracy.)
Oxford wrote:
“earlier events, a prior series of effects, a causal chain, causal connection”
“future events are fixed and unalterable”
Fails to say “already exist”!
Causal-chain determinism is still rooted in egoic possibilism open-future thinking, where you have the power to create your future control-thoughts; you just don’t have the power to create them any other way than you are determined.
The key question and distinction is: How is the future caused and created?
By horizontal causality; the earlier state causes the subsequent state.
By vertical causality (term that I coined); all times are created at once, including all of your near-future control-thoughts.
This article like typical near-100% of philosophy, is not eternalism, but is a distinct in-between hybrid: the “possibilism” mental worldmodel, but add a “single-path” constraint.
Position 1) possibilism, an open, variable future that’s controlled/ created by you, the steersman agent.
Position 1.5) possibilism + causal-chain determinism, you are the creator of your future control thoughts but you are forced to create them in one inevitable way that’s caused by the past moving to the future. God created the world at the beginning of time, wound up the clockwork mechanism at t[0].
Position 2) eternalism; your future control-thoughts already timelessly are pre-existing and pre-created. God created all times at once, in an interlocked order, per Bricklin’s book. No linear temporal causal sequence. An earlier state doesn’t “cause” the subsequent state.
Oxford continues:
“what William James called ‘the iron block universe‘:
That confirms my expected-easy finding that confirms my certain recollection that James said “iron block universe” rather than “block universe”.
Quote of Portions of Phrase “Iron Block Universe”
William James wrote (exact quote from Oxford but paragraph breaks added):
“those parts of the universealready laid down appoint and decree what other parts shall be.
“The future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb: the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality.
“Any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible.
“The whole is in each and every parts, and welds it with the rest into an absolute unity, an iron block in which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning.”
/ end of James quote
Oxford continues:
“only what actually happens could possibly have happened. There are no genuine alternatives to be realized.”
The Psilocybin Revelation of No Possibility-Branching
right leg: rely on non-branching mental worldmodel
worldline snake frozen in block-universe rock
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown
Photo credit: Julie M. Brown. Used by permission.
From Jerry Brown in March 2022 when he quoted from their 2019 article, fresco scholar woman’s book writing “youths in trees cutting away at the branches” with the 2019 article’s clearer highlighting than the Browns’ 2016 book.
Donkey’s left leg lifted, right leg relied on (a standard trope in this era/genre that I discovered and published/ announced in 2022).
The arrived/ epiphany of the higher-level controller/creator arrives in perception from Psilocybin, the revelation of non-branching; block-universe eternalism.
Oxford perpetuates the egoic, possibilism-thinking, in-time assumption.
“fates … having power over the future.”
“Many great philosophers have been determinists.”
Yeah but how many great philosophers were block-universe eternalists?
“whether we ourselves, persons, are subject tocausalnecessity.”
“Philosophers have cared less about whether or not the rest of the universe is determined — what they have cared more about is whether or not our lives are determined.”
“all our choices, decisions, intensions, other mental events, and our actions are effects of other [prior in time] equally necessitated events.”
“identical with the problem of freedom, or the free will problem.”
“our concept of moral responsibility. … attitudes such as resentment and gratitude.”
“Determinism puts in doubt all life-hopes, personal feelings, knowledge, moral responsibility, the rightness of actions, and the moral standing of persons.”
“Deliberation makes sense only if genuine alternatives are available to us. If determinism is true, only one course is genuinely open to me, so, my deliberation is irrational.”
Search Links
James wrote “iron block”; apparently not “iron block universe”.
This book, which I preordered in late 2015, is better than I assessed; I just have to keep expectations in check.
I posted a couple scattered subsections in pages, which required unmanageable many-to-many linking, which indicated I need to have a single dedicated page that all minor sections in other pages can link to.
Oxford Philosophy Book Hypnotized by “Determinism” Fails to Grasp Concept of Timeless Block Universe, Though Even a News Site Gets It
The dull-minded Philosophers fail to grasp block-universe eternalism because they are ossified stuck in the “determinism” concept; causal-chain determinism even when they say “block universe”.
The field of Philosophy – in this book – is stupefied by the egoic, possibilism-thinking based, domino-chain misconception of the block universe.
Oxford gets the “block universe” concept all backwards & reversed, conflating “block universe” (frozen-time block-universe eternalism) with mere domino-chain, in-time, causal-chain “determinism“.
Event Snodfart’s Junior Academy gets it, though their challenge is on the art front: they are incapable of drawing a tree, as I was drawing in high school.
“Common Core Mystical Experience” Is Defined Exclusively as Positive Boundaryless Unity (vs. Negative Ego Dissolution, or Fear of Loss of Control)
copied from idea development page 29 from book club email
May 14, 2025
The Egodeath community might meet again with Alan Houot (author of Rise of the Psychonaut), developing/ defining a high-quality, upward-convergent Science approach that can include Transcendent Knowledge aka Mysticism, in some framing.
The past few days, I re-read the article debate “Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science”.
Now in psychedelic science (psych. assisted therapy) there are many influential & compelling calls to broaden and open up, from that narrow model of what “mysticism” allegedly is, re: the alleged “common core” of mysticism, by which the writers meant, specifically, positive-experienced boundaryless unity.
My review of the article series strongly confirmed:
The Walter Stace 1960 model of so-called “mysticism” is specifically, narrowly, emphatically the experience of positive-experienced boundaryless unity.
The Stace model of “common core mysticism” is rooted in Advaita Vedanta ever since Swami Vivekananda in 1893, who met with William James.
That’s the historical origin of the dubious model of “a complete mystical experience” per Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ), Hood Mysticism Scale, & Hopkins group.
Writers following the Stace model of “mysticism” narrowly claim that mystical experience excludes any negative experience, such as what they call “ego dissolution“, by which they narrowly mean negatively experienced boundaryless unity — like reported in Michael Pollan’s book, re: Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ)), pp. 276-284, How to Change Your Mind; 5-MeO chapter: Pollan says the MEQ failed to match his terrifying experience, because too positive a framing to be applicable.
Charles Stang in Harvard video interview of R Griffiths also challenged the alleged model of “a complete mystical experience”;
Griffiths admits “we use a positive-balanced model”, and told Stang the Hopkins group has negative experiences covered by their (also positive-balanced) Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ).
{shadow dragon monster}/ transformation gate = experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control.
“We must not make the assumption that each subject wrote down his complete experience.
He might not have mentioned some particular phenomena because he did not think of it when he was writing his report, although we can assume that he reported what he thought was most important or what impressed him the most.
Stace has pointed out that even the mystics did not write as much as we would have liked about the actual phenomenology of their experiences.
The questionnaires and interviews provided a check on this type of omission, and such evidence should not be ignored.
…
Nine out of ten of the experimentals considered that their experience was significant and worthwhile and would be very willing, in fact eager, to try the experience again.
Crop by Michael Hoffman
Judged from the interviewer’s perspective, eight out of ten of these experiences were predominantly positive, and had a pronounced significant and worthwhile effect in the lives of the persons involved, according to their own testimonies.
One experimental had what he considered a worthwhile and significant experience from which he learned a great deal, but in regard to mystical phenomena his experience was not on the same level with the other eight.
In his account and interview it was obvious that he had spent much of his time trying to remain in control and to interpret and intellectualize his experience.
At one point he attempted to memorize Greek vocabulary-cards.
After one such experience he was eager to have another chance to let himself go into the experience more completely without trying to resist the effects of the drug.
The tenth experimental subject had what he termed
an interesting “psychological” and “aesthetic” experience for the first three-fourth of his experience,
but then became frightened by loss of control and spent the remaining time in a terrifying fight to overcome the drug effects.
He would not be interested in repeating the experience because his most predominant memory of the experience was that of fear.
Six months later, in Part I of the followup questionnaire, he considered this fear-experience slightly harmful because “in a mob panic situation, I feel I would be less likely to maintain a calm objective position than I might have formerly.”
During the interview he admitted that he had gone into the experience “as a psychological experiment” and had done no serious devotional preparation.
His “inspirational” reading while the drug was taking effect consisted of studying some Psalms for a course in the Old Testament.
His interpretation of his experience was a “psychotic episode.”
Titles of this Page
The Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism Provides a Scientific Basis for Mystic-State Experiencing, Superseding the “Mysticism, Meditation, & Psychotherapy” Framework
The Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism Provides a Scientific Explanatory Basis for Mystic-State Experiencing, Superseding the Mysticism, Meditation, & Psychoanalysis Frameworks
The Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism Fulfills Sanders and Zijlmans’ Call for a Scientific, not Mysticism, Explanatory Basis for Psychedelic Effects
Article: A Channel for Magic: Ralph Hood’s Mysticism Scale and the Occult Roots of the Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Program (Kitchens, Sep. 2022)
Article: Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self: An Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences (Taves, May 2020)
Debunks the “Positive Unity Experience” Model of Mysticism.
Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self: An Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences Ann Taves, 2020 Perspect Psychol Sci 2020 May;15(3):669-690 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32053465/ doi: 10.1177/1745691619895047. Epub 2020 Feb 13. PMID: 32053465 DOI: 10.1177/1745691619895047 Free article at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86r3f75j
Erratum in: Corrigendum: Mystical and Other Alterations in Sense of Self: An Expanded Framework for Studying Nonordinary Experiences. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2022 Mar;17(2):614. doi: 10.1177/17456916221076158. Epub 2022 Jan 24. PMID: 35073216
Strassman’s short article is praised by Davis 2020 article.
May 13, 2025: I read this 4-page article again: it is good. His Jewish complaints are reasonable. His critique of Wm Richards book Sacred Knowledge today solved a problem: I preorderd that 2015 book, and have been disappointed, now I know why: that book pushes the fake, made-up, wrong model of “mysticism”: positive Unity.
The book Sacred Knowledge is as bogus as
Stace,
Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ),
Mysticism Scale questionnaire, and
the ultimate bogosity, the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) — 100% junk psychedelic pseudo science.
I have now switched from critic of psychedelic pseudo science, to an outright debunker, following Travis Kitchens, Ann Taves, and all critics of Stace.
I suddenly find myself siding with obnoxious “naturalism materialism Science cheerleader Matt “Lose the Buddha Statue” Johnson: the statue means, the sheer invention of mysticism as positive – per the great creiticism of Stang on video at Harvard directly confronting Grifty, “your model of mysticism fails to match mystics”.
Roland Griffiths team at Johns Hopkins Dept. of Psychedelic Pseudo Science replied: “That’s ok, we use a positive-balanced model; see our positive-balanced negative effects the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ).”
I used to throw a bone to the “unity mysticism” model, saying that it is ok for beginner level mystical experience. I think that is bad strategy and a missed opportunity to hammer-smash fraudulent lies about mystical experience.
Positive Unity Mysticism Is Merely One Experience, Picked for Wrong Reasons, and Is Noxious Avoidance Strategy to Shut Out the Real Master Experience
Real …
I am re-settling, I am resetting as of 6:03 pm May 13, 2025, to attack bunk fake mysticism, just like I attacked and fully exposed Fraud Wasson.
Authentic mysticism — the kind that MATTERS and is worthy of respect — is about transformed control in transformed world, per the Egodeath theory/ myth/ lyrics/ mushroom-trees/ Mystery Religions.
The Fake Model (tepid about psychedelics; positive-balanced; Unity focused) Serves to Eliminate True Model, So the Fake Model Must Be Destroyed and Vigorously Rected
Article: Gnostic Psychedelia (Erik Davis, April 2020)
Stace Takes Another Hit – Davis 2020 Gnosis journal (editor April DeConick) article “Gnostic Psychedelia”
Good article, I resonate with many points. Even notes the over-influence of James and Stace.
Defines, sort of/ as if, two opposed versions of mysticism:
“Within the official clinical discourse, at least in America, the key to individual healing is largely tied to the capacity of psychedelics to trigger transcendental unitive and ecstatic experiences whose “mystical” character is vouchsafed, it must be said, byscholarship that is over half a century old.“
/ end of Davis quote near end of article
And ridiculously narrow, particular, and specific! Stace 1960 (out of print), James 1902.
All the clinical talk of “mystical experience” is not actual mystical experience, but is, instead Stacean so-called “mystical experience”, specifically, narrowly, particularly.
‘Hermetic’ = Stacean “mystical experience” vs. ‘Gnostic‘ = w/ DeConick, a critical, Gnostic equivalent opposed conception of the realm of so-called “mystical experience”.
Post: Gnostic Psychedelia and the Archetype of the Archons (Davis, Apr. 2020)
“I wrote this paper for Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies, a newish journal edited by April DeConick, with whom I had the great fortune of being able to study Gnosticism during my time at Rice.
—
“This article first draws out one particularly important feature of gnostic myth—the idea of the archons, or fallen “rulers” against whom the gnostic wages spiritual warfare.”
“In contemporary conspiracy culture, the archons now hold a prominent place at the table, but they are also described in both orthodox and heterodox texts of antiquity.
“Since I am describing a type rather than analyzing a particular sect or text, some scholars will probably find my use of the term too loose to be of value, but my goal is not to dig deeper into the ancient world.
—
“Instead, I use the concept of the archons to illuminate an important feature of modern western psychedelic culture that tends to get short shrift: an agonistic and critical spirituality directed against social reality, rather than the dominant perennialist emphasis on unity, interdependence, and Oneness.”
“In studying modern psychedelic texts from Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Jim DeKorne, Robert Anton Wilson, and Jonathan Talat Phillips—some of whom explicitly invoke the archons of old—I find a gnostic psychology that has much to say to our time of crisis, and that features a more explicitly political dimension to entheogenic vision.”
link to article pdf
/ end of Davis post
Evil Rulers of the 21st Century Shoving Their Denatured Psychedelic RenaissanceTM Down Our Throats While Keeping Psilocybin Prohibition Firmly in Place, Foisting Their Bunk Non-Mystic Mysticism to Replace Psychedelic Experiencing
Grassroots psychedelicists vs. Hopkins Prohibition-compliant therapy & the top-down fake imposed alien invaders “Michael Pollan surprise bestseller” and “Brian Muraresku surprise bestseller” books that were MADE to be bestsellers by MegaCorp Publishers.
Entheogen scholarship went off the rails and lost the plot, by caring far more about their “secret suppressed hereetical sects” narrative which became the opporessive narrative that NEUTERED every finding in mushroom imagery in Christian art, converting them to de-powered evidence instead, of mushrooms in HERETICAL Christianity.
Against Ruck the Neutralizer, every instance of mushroom imagery in Christian art amounts to evidence of mushroom imagery within Christianity — NOT in Ruck’s fabricated “in heretical Christianity” heavy-handed narrative that’s far more important to Ruck than real psychedelics or repeal of Psilocybin prohibition. Ruck school is not driven by interest in finding evidence for psychedelics in religious history.
What motivates the Ruck school is storytime tale-telling of the Big Bad Church vs. suppressed The Mushroom (🍄) — not an interest in psychedelics or repeal of Psilocybin prohibition.
In the Amanita Primacy Fallacy, in entheogen scholarship driven by AND CONSTRAINED BY the Amanita Primacy Fallacy, scholars don’t get high on psychedelics; they get high on crybaby infantile narrative ritual retelling of the great tabu suppression of Our Holy Sacred Mushroom, Amanita.
The present Davis section was copied from there to here wholesale, then rearranged.
Article: Consciousness, Religion, and Gurus: Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine (Johnson, April 2021)
Consciousness, Religion, and Gurus: Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine Matthew Johnson https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00198 ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science 20214 (2), 578-581 DOI: 10.1021/acsptsci.0c00198
Matthew Johnson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
Article: Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science (Sanders & Zijlmans, May 2021)
“The mysticism framework is used to describe psychedelic experiences and explain the effects of psychedelic therapies.
“We discuss risks and difficulties stemming from the scientific use of a framework associated with supernatural or nonempirical belief systems and encourage researchers to mitigate these risks with a demystified model of the psychedelic state.”
Sanders aren’t against mystical experience, they are against the Walter Stace-based mysticism model and lexicon.
Condensed excerpts
Condensed excerpts rewritten by Cybermonk for scholarly commentary & analysis – deliberately making very minor deviations; see the article for exact quotes:
“Concepts like “pure awareness” and “ineffable” experiences of “ultimate reality” … these statements are too seldom accompanied by a deeper discussion on what a term like mystical means within the context of psychedelic science, and what consequences might come with the scientific use of the mysticism framework.
“The root [“scientific basis”] of mysticism in psychedelic science lies in the work of philosopher W. T. Stace, who in 1960 theorized a distinct type of “mystical consciousness” achieved through a variety of cultural practices.
“Stace’s theory was informed by theological, historical, and anecdotal accounts, and the defining criteria for the state include
a sense of unity – agree
a sense of timelessness – agree
a sense of spacelessness – agree
a sense of objectivity and reality – agree
a sense of sacredness – disagree, not useful expl’y construct
a sense of blessedness – disagree, not useful expl’y construct
a sense of peace – disagree, not useful expl’y construct
a sense of paradoxicality – disagree, not useful expl’y construct
a sense of ineffability – disagree, not useful expl’y construct
“Early psychedelic researchers adopted the concept and took these criteria as relevant operational categories for the study of psychedelic experiences.” – Sanders p. 1 col. 1
The field is foolishly and unhelpfully attempting to do scientific research in psychedelic mystic-state experiencing, by applying Stace’s conception of mysticism as the scientific basis for all of psychometrics science of mystic-type experiencing.
“the encroachment of supernatural and nonempirical beliefs on psychedelic science, we identify shortcomings of this link between mysticism and psychedelic research
“The mysticism framework, along with its associated theories and terminology, should be actively superseded.
“the risks stemming from the relation between mysticism and supernatural or otherwise nonempirical belief systems [& would-be psychedelic science]
“why current researchers should be optimistic at their prospects of creating valid frameworks that are supported by, and accessible to, empirical methods.
“the ways in which new frameworks may bring greater benefit for science and society alike.” – Sanders, p. 1 col 2.
“Within psychedelic science, we are concerned that use of the mysticism framework creates a “black box” mentality in which researchers are content to treat certain aspects of the psychedelic state as beyond the scope of scientific inquiry.”
love it! 🎉
Condensed excerpts by Cybermonk for scholarly commentary & analysis:
““psychedelic exceptionalism”: when psychedelic experiences are taken to be “so sacred or important that the normal rules do not apply” [cites Matthew “Lose the Buddha statue” Johnson]
Griffiths/Studerus-type articles refer to Stace’s book as the “scientific” basis, and they also, as a fallback, claim James 1902.
The James/ Stace/ Pahnke/ Richards/ Griffiths line of mysticism framework and lexicon.
Pahnke/ Richards/ Griffiths call Walter Stace’s 1960 book Mysticism and Philosophy their “scientific” basis.
Griffiths’ system of articles & the MEQ43 & MEQ30 stands or falls with Stace’ 1960 book — that single book is used and cited as the science basis for their “mysticism” model.
Sanders & Zijlmans and I condemn the Stace “ineffability” premise (they articulate this well).
We demand (& The Theory of Pychedelic Eternalism provides) useful, scientifically proper articulate explanation and lexicon, instead of “Mysticism” per Stace 1960.
Beginning in 1985-1988, the Egodeath theory (the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism) rejects and replaces these failed, unhelpful explanatory frameworks that substitute from STEM-type clear, useful explanation:
Mysticism (per Stace 1960 eg ineffability,
Meditation (ie conventinoal assumptions and paradigm, non-drug meditation as the original authority)
Psychoanalysis (eg Grof’s application of psychedelics to prop up the bunk “science” of psychoanalysis)
/end my commentary
Page 2 Excerpts
Condensed, marked up, and annotated for scholarly purposes.
The “reply” articles have zero quotes of Sanders’ actual position statements and phrasing. The field has two caricature positions available: mystics studying mystical experiencing, vs. naturalistic scientists studying psychedelic states & psychedelic experiences.
psychedelic states & psychedelic experiences includes mystical experiencing but we won’t make Stace’s Mysticism the framework that we employ; we need scientific frameworks, not mysticism-based frameworks (Stace 1960)
“As scientists, we should not be satisfied to label psychedelic experiences as “ineffable”, “paradoxical”, or “void”
“The termmysticaldoes little in terms of explaining psychobiological phenomena.
“Although the subjective aspect of psychedelic experiences may be difficult for the individual to fathom and describe, the terminology and conceptualization scientists use in their research should not imply that a psychedelic experience holds a special status of inaccessibility beyond other kinds of experience.
“To assume this special status a priori is unscientifically pessimistic.“
BRAVO!!
As the Egodeath theory does; as the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism does, we must take perfection/ completion of initiation/ enlightenment/ satori down off its pedestal of inaccessibility and alienated mis-reverence that everyone strives to glorify it upon, pushing it out of reach and distorting Transcendent Knowledge.
“By using the mystical experience construct, we are providing participants with a particular terminology and framework with which to understand their psychedelic experiences.
“When we administer a mystical experience questionnaire, we invite participants to interpret their experience through the framework of mysticism.
“We risk creating biased data and may fail to learn from participants’ own articulation and interpretation.” – Sanders p. 2 left col
“mystical experience phenomena are conflated with mystical beliefs about what psychedelic experiences mean.”
That’s a key distinction, between experiencing vs. interpretation.
Is Psychedelic Science to be driven by the STEM-type effort to figure stuff out and explain it usefully? Or, driven by Pop Sike Cult?
“We observe a broader and stronger use of mystical language and concepts than is warranted by the science.
“The integration of mysticism [as framework/lexicon, not experiencing -cm] into research and clinical practice risks creating unrealistic and potentially problematic expectations and associations.”
“As scientists, we must consider more carefully our choice of frameworks and more actively distance psychedelic research and clinical practice from the supernatural, fantastical, and divine; mysticism.”
Section heading: “Demystifying Our Concepts” – tons of great quotable assertions and calls for change. See the article. eg:
“A superficial change in terminology will not address the depth of mysticism’s influence in psychedelic science — rather, new theories rooted in the modern empirical study of conscious states are needed.”
DONE: see the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism; the Egodeath theory.
I read the word ’empirical’ per the essay Eye to Eye by Ken Wilber, except “eye of spirit” actually means Reason that’s used in the advanced Psilocybin altered state.
‘Reason’ here means rational, clear, useful model construction, informed by probing & testing & demonstration & state-specific observation.
More brilliant wording from Sanders & Zijlmans, condensed for scholarly commentary – a huge breath of fresh air for me.
I’m so glad others notice the crazy, unscientific degree to which Stace’s 1960 book Mysticism and Consciousness is treated by Griffiths et al as Gospel Science handed down from God, the rock-solid authoritative basis on which to construct Psychedelic Science:
“Alternative [to the mysticism lexicon,] terms such as “ peak experience” and “ oceanic boundlessness” exist in the literature, but in each case, the theory and measurement of constructs remain closely linked to Stace’ s mystical consciousness.”
Glad to see Stace specifically named as the soggy sand foundation of this mess.
“Stace’s choices in research methods and sources reflect an assumption that the states he studied are infrequent, transient, and difficult to observe.”
Sanders and Zijlmans point out like I’ve done: it is so ironic that Wouter Hanegraaff acts like the mystic state is an alien, inaccessible thing, when there are psychedelic truffles right across the street in the smartshop, an incredible wealth of the cognitive loosener readily on tap:
“Contemporary researchers should not feel as limited:
“psychedelics can be administered in experimental settings, and participant experiences can be probed with methods that do not assume a mystical framework of explanation from the outset.”
“states that are currently labeled as ‘mystical’.”
“Psychedelic science has not made a concerted effort to supersede Stace’ s mystical consciousness concept with an alternative rooted in empirical data and an unambiguously secular framework.”
DONE: See the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism; the Egodeath theory.
How to read their word ‘secular’ as opposed to ‘mystical’: here, the word ‘secular‘ is firmly based in the advanced intense Psilocybin state.
The word ‘secular’, in sharp contrast against ‘mystical’, means commitment to clear, explicit, directly expressed, STEM-type explanatory models.
“It is concerning whenever mysticism is taken for granted in psychedelic science circles: our choice of frameworks and measures serves to reify concepts such as mystical consciousness without sufficient justification, which opens the door for unscientific assumptions and associations.
“By demystifying scientific understanding of the psychedelic state, scientists can increase the scientific credibility of the frameworks used in their research and fill gaps in our understanding of latent psychological phenomena that could previously only be [pseudo-] filled in mystical ways.”
Bravo!
The Mysticism framework substitutes for (and shuts out) useful comprehensibility, which had been delivered by the STEM-driven Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism.
Note that “increasing the credibility” sounds like Letcher Hatsis calling to “Save the reputation of entheogen scholarship by deleting mushrooms (picture exclusively 🍄) and the Secret Amanita Cult 🤫🍄 theory.”
quotes from p. 3 are in a section below
Advaita Vedanta the Weak Engine of Integral Theory
I was a little shocked to eventually realize Ken Wilber is pushing glorified Advaita Vendanta non-drug meditation.
Non-drug meditation is the best way to avoid ever posing any threat to egoic delusion.
Non-drug meditation guarantees the mind is never loosened and turned, to transform the mind from possibilism to eternalism.
Meditation keeps the mind from transforming from child form to adult form.
Meditation is a product of drug prohibition and freewill fog, to substitute for and avoid Psilocybin, which would cause meditation to work correctly.
Authentic meditation is Psilocybin meditation. Meditation came from Psilocybin.
David Nichols is a top chemist, collaborator with Shulgin.
Nichols debated a meditation huckster. Nichols asserted:
Psilocybin produced Meditation.
Non-drug meditation makes no sense.
It makes no sense the invention of meditation, without coming from psychedelics.
Page 3 Excerpts
Condensed excerpts rewritten by Cybermonk for scholarly commentary & analysis – deliberately making very minor deviations; see the article for exact quotes:
“In fact, there are new understandings in development that have the potential to perform this function, informed by diverse modern methodologies.”
“Psychological phenomena previously [pseudo-] explained as mystical might come to be understood in terms that are not encumbered by theological, supernatural, or fantastical baggage.”
“This leads us to an optimistic note:
“With a clear and accessible model of why psychedelic therapies are showing such promising results, we can use psychedelic research to its greatest benefit.
“Theories must describe in clear terms the relationship between the data we collect and the psychobiological concepts we employ.”
“These states of consciousness need no longer be treated as an elusive black box.
“We must utilize the tools and opportunities available to reconceptualize this aspect of the psychedelic state, so that science and society alike can benefit from new ways to understand and experience what was once considered unfathomable.”
/ end of Conclusion of article Moving Past Mysticism
Strawmanning the Sanders Article: Sanders Says We Should Eliminate Subjective Experiencing. <– CITATION NEEDED!
Reconciling Mystical Experiences with Naturalistic Psychedelic Science: Reply to Sanders and Zijlmans https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.1c00137 Jussi Jylkkä (2021) June 8, 2021 Published by American Chemical Society
Some authors aren’t replying to Sanders’ article, but rather, to a certain general philosophical vision or school or mentality. They conflate the Sanders article with the general mentality.
Articles ought to distinctly reply to the particular statements asserted by Sanders’ article, and, the general mentality of materialistic science, reductionism, dismissive of altered state.
Jylkka’s first sentence is a false statement, no quote is provided, it’s a misrepresentation, false attribution of position:
“Sanders and Zijlmans ignore the subjective aspect of psychedelic experiences. Mystical experiences are felt as real and can yield personally meaningful insights.”
Sanders never denied that. Strawman much?
Quote/citation needed!
Strawman, WATCH THE TRICKY WORDING HERE:
“In a recent Viewpoint article, Sanders and Zijlmans call for the demystification of the psychedelic experience.”
YOU wrote: “demystification of the psychedelic experience” – that’s YOUR words, that’s a misrepresentation through trying to sneak words past the reader.
Jylkkä should honor Sanders’ ACTUAL wording.
Let’s see some quotes! Jylkkä can’t, because then their fake & phony “argument” collapses.
Why should I even read this article, that’s all driven by misrepresentation?
Please reply to the article, not your fantasy projection onto it.
Jylkkä wrote “demystification of the psychedelic experience”. Show me that combination of words in Sanders – Jylkkä can’t; it’s not there.
But what did Sanders IN FACT write that seems similar but is very different?
Let’s see some quotes, Jylkkä can’t back up their B.S. false claims and misrepresentation through cheap wording trickery.
Writers are strawmanning Sanders, freely misrepresenting this article — they appear to have not have not read the article – as if they imagined what the article says but haven’t read it, and are not actually responding to Sanders’ article, but to some other article.
Did they even read this article? no indication of that.
The particular article(s) reflect a broader difference and tension about doing psychedelic within “the secular” vs. “the mystical” paradigm. In a response statement in LucidNews Don Lattin’s article Sanders writes:
Again I see high-quality, quotable writing from Sanders & Zijlmans, and poor-quality writing and tons of strawmanning from other writers.
Lattin wrote:
“Zijlmans, a post-doc researcher who runs a course on the neuroscience, history and therapeutic potential of psychedelics, said in an interview [w/ Lattin?] that critics have misinterpreted their paper.”
[topic: the framework/ theories/ lexicon that Psychedelic Scientists use:]
“We are not only trying to explain things biologically,” he said.
[topic: the experiences people have:]
“These are extraordinary, weird experiences that are very meaningful and powerful to people.”
[topic: the framework/ theories/ lexicon that Psychedelic Scientists use:]
I just want to explain them accurately and scientifically, rather than vaguely. ‘Weird’ and ‘mystical’ don’t capture it.”
I noticed in the pseudo-response articles: VAGUENESS and strawmanning, so was glad to see this final note where Zijlmans says the need is to move past vagueness of explanatory framework.
“For example, he [Zijlmans] prefers to attribute the experience of a high-dose trip to “ego dissolution” rather than some “mystical” connection to Ultimate Reality or the collective unconscious.”
[diss’ing Jungianism, the popular heavy-handed overlay]
The other articles just project a poor, weak position onto this article, but the authors of Sanders article write well and articulate their points well.
The other writers never quote this article but just make claims that this article is against mystical experience.
Response articles never address this article’s position in terms that this article puts forth:
Sanders is against scientists applying (and being limited to) Stace’s mysticism framework and lexicon.
Sanders makes this point very prominently and clearly and emphatically.
Bad writers ignore Sanders’ clearly stated point and position (did they even read the article? I see no indication), and they just strawman some other point and position that this author doesn’t assert.
The other articles ought to quote this article, but then they’d be forced to do the hard work of writing a real reply to this article’s actual position.
LucidNews.org provided a little more balanced, lucid news about this article. Don Lattin:
“In his recent paper, Matt Johnson has no problems with patients bringing their own religious icons or ideas into psychedelic sessions.
“But he advises against guides and therapists bringing theirspiritual preconceptions and religious paraphernalia into session rooms.”
Johnson’s advice matches
Sanders’ advice in May issue matches Johnson’s advice in April. One issue had Matthew “Lose the Buddha statue” Johnson’s article, next issue had Sanders’ article saying the same kinds of points. People all came to the defensense of mystical experience, — total straw man! Sandkers emphasizes pointedly up front, the message is don’t use the Stace “mysticism” framework and lexicon, to do science.
This clash of views about “mysticism” framework/ approach in psychedelic psychometrics science / psychedelic assisted therapy is similar to disparaging the religionism approach/ methodology style, in the field of academic history of esotericism.
Since I finally got a clear view of the two opposed, radical empiricism” vs. “religionism” perspectives, I can better understand Sanders’ critique and distinctions between approach vs. the experiences studied by the approach.
Bad writers conflate Sanders’ critique of a science approach that uses the mysticism framework and lexicon as if Sanders had instead critiqued the mystical experiencing which science is studying.
Pros and Cons of Sanders’ Article
Pros: Many Right-on Quotable Statements
The article contains many excellent passages I agree with — well worded, and that I’d like to quote here – so many, it’s hard to know where to start. A breath of fresh air!
“The purported “sacredness”, “ineffability”, and “noetic quality” of these states may take on characteristics congruent with scientific understanding if an accessible scientific explanation exists, and if questionnaires reflecting this explanation are administered.” – Sanders p. 1254 at end.
An accessible scientific explanation was exactly what I demanded, explaining the nature and summary-explanation of “ego transcendence” in October 1985 through December 1987.
My father in 1985 gave me Ken Wilber & Alan Watts books as the least-inept books on ego transcendence available.
It was then perfectly clear that the mysticism bozos, busy reveling in “words can’t“, were never in a million years going to deliver a sensible, coherent, useful explanatory framework and lexicon like is standard in STEM.
It was all too clear in 1986 that it fell on me — the Engineering student — to articulate comprehensibly and usefully the summary of the real nature of ego transcendence:
loosen cognition, experience block-universe and worldlines, transform from egoic possibilism-thinking mental worldmodel to the eternalism-thinking mental worldmodel.
And then write an article explaining the actual nature of ego transcendence to the field and Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.
Sanders & Zijlmans use the term “the psychedelic state” in place of the term “the mystical state” or “the mystic state”
hit count:
“mystical experience” – 14 hits
“psychedelic experience” – 11 hits
“psychedelic state” – 6 hits
“mystical state” – 0 hits
“mystic state” – 0 hits
“mystic-type state” – 0 hits
“mystic experience” – 0 hits
Cons: Cognitive Neuro-Reductionism
All of the strawman pseudo-replies to Sanders criticize and condemn neuro-reductionism, and I agree with that. I need to develop this idea to the extreme completion:
I AM A DEDICATED DEFENDER OF A PURELY COGNITIVE PHENOMENOLOGY APPROACH WITH NO COMPROMISE WITH NEURO-REDUCTIONISM aka “materialist naturalism”.
What is “naturalistic Science”?
Is the Egodeath theory a “naturalistic” theory? define “naturalism” in Science. Her’s a definition, this is so not my vocabulary, this notion of “causes”:
naturalism – “the philosophical belief that: Everything arises from natural properties and causes. Supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted. – Oxford Languages
Naturalism Defined
Everything arises from natural properties and causes.
Supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.
It’s a given that those concepts will be mapped by habit, to ordinary state & altered state.
In this biased context of Late Modernity,
“Everything arises from natural properties and causes” will be misread as:
Science as a mode of explanation should be restricted to the ordinary state.
“Supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted” will be misread as:
The altered state should not be drawn from as a source of explanation.
So you end up with awful theories like the entire horrible field of CSR, “the Cognitive Science of Religion”, which is ordinary state Cog Sci explaining away ordinary state “religion” or what passes for “religion”.
Reductionistic Cog Sci then delivers what passes for a “Science” explanation of what passes for “Religion”. In such a mileaux, we’re given:
Bunk reductionist Science
Bunk reductionist supernaturalist Religion is supernaturalist and yet reductionist at the same time.
Generalized ‘Reductionism’: any time you mis-analyze or mis-model any domain (regardless of ‘level’) as if it were a different domain than it really is; = category error
We need a concept that’s a hybrid of “reductionism” and “category error” that gets rid of restricting the concexpt of ‘reductionism’ to only mean “modelling a higher level domain as if it were instead a different, lower-level domain”.
The concept of “any two domains have a religion of higher vs lower” is wrong and limiting.
Get rid of the concept of “higher vs lower” in the word “reduce”; make “reduce” mean generally “omit because category error”.
Actually, to be reductionistic is to omit & misrepresent the real nature of a domain, because of making a category error.
‘Reductionism’ is best defined as generalized category error.
The real, actual essence of reductionism, the problem that the concept ‘reductionism’ actually addresses, is not really about “wrong level” or “too low level”.
The error & fallacy of ‘reductionism’ is actually, any time you mis-analyze or mis-model on domain as if it were a different domain than it really is.
Supernaturalism (& parapsychology) is a category error that’s proffered as an alternative to reductionist (pseudo-) Science.
Junk Science is no better than Junk Religion, which are no better than Junk Esotericism (the phony “3rd option”).
The problem with the word ‘naturalism’ is that like all our concepts, it is already compromised and participating in a false network/matrix of biased, stunted, reductionist, bad values; ‘naturalism’ connotes restricting science to the ordinary state of consciousness.
All of our language, terminology, and assumption-set, and paradigm, all favors restricting ourselves to the ordinary state of consciousness. Therefore (Tart is trying to change this):
‘rational’ means ordinary state
‘naturalism’ means ordinary state (and materialism)
‘scientific’ means ordinary state (and materialism)
Every word in the dictionary in the Modern period connotes and assumes ordinary state (and materialism).
Any phrase or term other than intens intense mystic altered state is ASSUMED to be based in valuing and advocating for ordinary state —
‘science’, ‘reason’, ‘logos’, ‘rationality’, ‘naturalism’, ‘sanity’, “good judgment”, are all in biased fashion grounded in and limited to the ordinary state.
“We should be scientific” is taken to mean “We should be limited to the ordinary state.”
“We should use Reason” is taken to mean “We should be limited to the ordinary state.”
“We should use naturalism” is taken to mean “We should be limited to the ordinary state.” Including our explanatory framework should be grounded in, which is taken to mean restricted to, the ordinary state.
I disagreed with all of Charles Tart’s wording.
Tart’s call for “multi-state science” is all mis-articulated, misspoken. Scrap Tart’s writings and use streamlined expression instead:
Fake Science is restricted to the ordinary state. Authentic Science is fully engaged with the altered state.
Proper Science (Loose Cog Sci) is fully engaged with switching between the ordinary state & altered state.
Todo: Good Quotes from the Reply Articles
Cognitive Neuro-Reductionism in Sanders’ Article, Which Everyone Rightly Rejects
We should not psychologize(?) MEs.
We should reject Sanders’ element of neuro-reductionism, also people push back against the general Sanders-type view and they warn “We should not psychologize clients’ M.E.’s” (mystical experiences).
5 hits on “neuro”. I’m against “neurofoo” and loathe and resent Cognitive Neuro-Reductionism.
All 5 hits on ‘neuro’ in the article body:
“Neuroimaging can help elucidate biopsychological mechanisms and contextualize qualitative results.” – Sanders & Zijlmans 2021, p. 2
“Demystified psychedelic research has the potential to enlighten subjective experiences of the psychedelic state.
“Cognitive neuroscience concepts have been adopted by laypeople to explain, interpret, and predict experiences and behaviors in new ways.
“Using the example of addiction, researchers have highlighted the potential benefits of neuroscience influencing common understanding:
“knowing the role of neurophysiology in their experience of substance abuse disorder, addicts can gain informative and lucid new ways to characterize and contextualize their feelings and behaviors, gaining a more realistic concept of personal agency regarding their treatment.
“We assert that cognitive neuroscience can do the same for the psychedelic state” – Sanders & Zijlmans 2021, p. 2
Cons: Eager to Strike a Psychedelics-Diminishing Pose
“Then, the benefits of psychedelic science might extend from providing therapies for those already afflicted to developing preventative measures that need not even require the use of psychedelic drugs.” – Sanders, Moving Past Mysticism p. 1255, just above the Conclusion.
Sanders, why are you, a Psychedelic Scientist, advocating for not requiring psychedelics?
What Prohibitionist-compliant system of values and attitudes are you selling?
Like the Meditation hucksters argue, “Soon, you’ll be able to get rid of Psychedelics — fake, simulated, pseudo-meditation — and graduate to the real thing: authentic, bona fide, traditional non-drug meditation.” Which is all lies and falsehoods, since actually, AUTHENTIC MEDITATION IS NONE OTHER THAN PSILOCYBIN MEDTIATION.
It’s ok to meditate without psychedelics, but it is unacceptable (per the Egodeath theory / the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism, especially the entheogen Mytheme theory, the “eternalism” theory of mental transformation ) to tell & parrot the compromised, compromising, false narrative that “meditation didn’t come from Psilocybin” and “the authentic reference standard for Meditation is non-drug meditation.”
I’m supposed to overlook and wink at this affectation of disrespect for psychedelics – but it is a major red flag, actually; you can’t just slip-in, “psychedelics suck and are fake and inferior”, “With success, Psychedelic Science will soon be able to get rid of psychedelics!” – WE SAW THAT, we very much noticed.
Sanders, here’s your “developing preventative measures that need not even require the use of psychedelic drugs” – Nixon’s drug schedules; the Prohibition of Psilocybin, putting people in cages for using Psilocybin.
Sanders tries to appease and sell and market and appeal to anti-psychedelics mentality, by promising as if a good thing, “hopefully we can get rid of Psychedelics!”
Who are you trying to appeal to, Prohibitionists?
Whose vote are you trying to win, like a politician trying to make self-contradictory promises to two opposed camps?
Cons: Eager to Get Rid of Psychedelics; Insincerely Strategically Striking a Pose and Fake Affectation of a Stance of Diminishing Psychedelics
On Affectation, On Striking a Pose of Compromise and Moderateness by Diminishing and Lowering Psilocybin and elevating to the skies “he traditional non-drug methods of the mystics”
Striking a stance of diminishing psychedelics isn’t a repeated, constant theme that runs throughout the Sanders article.
But this strategic anti-psychedelics attitude that they let slip or that they PUT ON SHOW, the fact that Sanders tried to use the strategy like Hanegraaff of “Try to look like you are anti-psychedelics”, like Griffiths trying to cop a stance, an affectation, like Brown, trying to bargain with haters – I’m working out how to explain it, I have to make voice recordings to talk it through.
You try to compromise, you try to appease, you try to market & position yourself & strike a POSE, an affected STANCE, it is insincere. “Look at me, I’m not a psychedelics enthusiast, I’m not an Ardent Advocate, I’m not an extremist, watch me disparage and disrespect and put down psychedelics, look at what a middling, neutral, middle of the road, look how compromised and compromising I am, look at my elevate and glorify non-drug ways that “can” “could” “might” and “may” produce the exact same effects as a 10-strip (repeated ten weeks), same as two bowls of Cubensis 3 hours apart, repeated 10 weeks.”
“Then, the benefits of psychedelic science might extend from providing therapies for those already afflicted to developing preventative measures that need not even require the use of psychedelic drugs.” – p. 1255, just above the Conclusion.
Also, authentic non-drug meditation could produce the exact same effect as ten sessions of two bowls of Cubensis redosed, producing a complete mystic-state transformation from possibilism to eternalism.
Also, the traditional non-drug methods of the mystics can produce the exact same effect as ten sessions of two bowls of Cubensis redosed, producing a complete mystic-state transformation from possibilism to eternalism.
Also, Groffian birth-memory abreactive psychotherapy may produce the exact same effect as ten sessions of two bowls of Cubensis redosed, producing a complete mystic-state transformation from possibilism to eternalism.
Article: Reconciling Mystical Experiences with Naturalistic Psychedelic Science: Reply to Sanders and Zijlmans (Jylkkä, June 2021)
Reconciling Mystical Experiences with Naturalistic Psychedelic Science: Reply to Sanders and Zijlmans https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.1c00137 Jussi Jylkkä (2021) June 8, 2021 Published by American Chemical Society
Article: Working with Weirdness: A Response to “Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science” (Breeksema & van Elk, July 2021)
Clearly this is another misrepresentation of Sanders, relying on conflating “mysticism” as an explanatory framework with the experiencing that’s called “mystical experiencing”.
Sanders is not saying anything against Science studying the experiencing that’s called “mystical experiencing”.
Sanders is saying to use Science, not Stace’s “mysticism” framework and lexicon, as the basis to explain and study the experiencing that’s called “mystical experiencing”.
p. 3, Breeksema & van Elk writes:
first of all, realize that Breeksema & van Elk is one of those repliers who TAKES IT AS GRANTED that what we Psychedelic Scientists are attempting to study, and are striving to study, is mystical experiences.
Sanders disagrees on that fundamental assumption; we are striving to study psychedelic effects, not mystical experiences.
Per Sanders, our specified project is the study of psychedelic effects, the psychedelic state, not the study of mystical experiences; not the mystic state.
If the psychedelic state includes mystical experiences / the mystic state, fine, BUT DON’T JUST ASSUME THAT RIGHT OUT THE GATE.
Elk wrote (tilting at windmills, acting like Sanders is against this):
“However, rather than “actively superseding” the concept of MEs, a category of extraordinary human experience, we argue that this should spur psychedelic researchers to investigate all other possible relevant angles and pathways of studying MEs, using the full methodological toolkit available to science, of which neuroscience techniques are but one possible approach.
“Getting rid of MEs [strawman!] because they are difficult to research, lack plausible neurocognitive [Cognitive Neuroreductionism] explanations or because of problematic colloquial associations would be throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
“And although science may not currently have all the tools to explain or study these weird experiences, they are still “real” and meaningful to many.”
The battle between Science vs. Mysticism/Vagueness
Regarding ‘weird’ and ‘mystical’, Sanders retorted in an interview with Don Lattin of Lucid.news Sep. 9, 2021, “‘weird’ is too vague”.
Exact quote: Zijlmans told Lattin:
“We are not only trying to explain things biologically.” [emphasis in the original]
“These are extraordinary, weird experiences that are very meaningful and powerful to people.” [emphasis in the original]
“I just want to explain them accurately and scientifically, rather than vaguely.”
“‘Weird’ and ‘mystical’ don’t capture it.”
Naturally, everyone whose strategy is to strawman (misrepresent) Sanders, uses the phrase “straw man” against Sanders or against the mentality which Sanders is supposed to represent.
They even presume to lecture Sanders about the distinction between explanation vs. explanandum.
I am very glad to see that word ‘vague’ used by Sanders, because I have been making “vague” my #1 emphasis during marking up my hardcopies.
In 1986, I rejected the “mysticism” framework because it is vague and unhelpful and inarticulate, and it positively revels in vagueness.
Griffiths LOVES his “ineffable” category so much, that you’ll flunk his Complete [Newbie] Mystical Experience test if you fail to give him (Team Vagueness) the correct doctrinal answer, “my experience was ineffable”.
If you fail to give vague mystical wording to Griffiths, he fails you – you weren’t vague, therefore you weren’t mystical.
YOU WEREN’T SUFFICIENTLY VAGUE, THEREFORE, YOU FAILED TO HAVE A COMPLETE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE.
Are we to erect our Science of Psychedelics on a “basis” which is chosen and selected and preferred because of its vagueness?
In the boxing ring: In one corner, is James/ Stace/ Pahnke/ Richards/ Griffiths, and the replies to Sanders: Team Vagueness.
In the other corner, is Cybermonk, Sanders: Team Science, Team Clarity.
Selected for: that’s the “selection bias” that Griffiths has been accused of by Charles Stang etc.
STEM vs. Mysticism, as Modes of Explanatory Models
Egodeath theory (Science specificity & articulateness) vs. Vagueness
I watched a spirituality interview of Sarah Elkhaldy today: it was vague. It wasn’t wrong; it was vague.
I let my expectations get a little too high for the book The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James’ Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment (Bricklin 2016). Nothing in Bricklin’s book is wrong; the book’s just not as clear on the key points as it needs to be.
The mysticism interview didn’t fail a test of truth; it failed a test of comprehensibility, specificity, usefulness, efficiency, clarity, coherence of principles.
Video title: Sarah Elkhaldy | Alchemy, Freewill, Timelines, Dimensions | Ep. 177 Details below the video. “Danica Patrick” channel, 192K subscribers. Series: Pretty Intense Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pivu5LVFJnk
Sanders IN FACT says we should supersede the following:
the mysticism framework
theories that are associated with the mysticism framework
terminology that’s associated with the mysticism framework
Exact quotes from Sanders are below, to back up my assertion, against Elk’s fabricating of phrasings to falsely attribute to Sanders.
Why does no one ever quote Sanders, in these “reply” articles?
Elk gives an incomplete quote of Sanders, pretending to quote Sanders: “actively superseding” (followed by strawman false attribution of a position to Sanders).
Why didn’t Breeksema & van Elk quote a full phrasing from Sanders?
Because Breeksema & van Elk’s article is a project of misrepresenting Sanders’ stated position.
What did Sanders actually write, when using the term ‘supersede’? There are 2 hits on ‘supersede’ in Sanders’ article:
“However, in light of the encroachment of supernatural and nonempirical beliefs on psychedelic science, we identify shortcomings of this link between mysticism and psychedelic research, and we contend that the mysticism framework, along with its associated theories and terminology, should be actively superseded.” – Sanders, Moving Past Mysticism, p. 1 of PDF.
Sanders wrote 5 hits on ‘terminology’, including:
“the terminology and conceptualization scientists use in their research should not imply that a psychedelic experience holds a special status of inaccessibility beyond other kinds of experience.”
Sanders’ hit 2 of 2 on “supersed”:
“Perhaps we state the obvious by listing these avenues of research, but we contend that psychedelic science has not made a concerted effort to supersede Stace’s mystical consciousness concept with an alternative rooted in empirical data and an unambiguously secular framework.”
The strawmanners claim that Sanders says we should get rid of: mystical experiences.
In fact, Sanders says here to get rid of, specifically: “Stace’s mystical consciousness concept“.
Sanders’ ACTUAL request is to:
Move from a mysticism framework to a secular framework, as the basis and as a set of concepts and terminology, in order to scientifically study psychedelic experiencing, which includes what’s been called ‘mystical experiences‘.
Move from assuming (thinking of ourselves as striving to) that we’re studying mystical experiences using a mysticism framework to assuming that we’re studying psychedelic experiencing (which may to some extent include experiences that some have called ‘mystical’).
Move from thinking of ourselves as striving to study mystical experiences using a mysticism framework, to assuming that we’re studying psychedelic experiencing (which may to some extent include experiences that some have called ‘mystical’) by using a secular framework.
hits on ‘secular’ in Sanders’ article: 2 hits. one is in a ‘supersede’ quote, the other is in the Conclusion section.
Which sections contain ‘supersede’? p1 & 2, not Conclusion.
Sanders wrote in the Conclusion:
“Prospective frameworks should be unambiguously secular, and alternative questionnaires need to be explored or developed so as to not only predict outcomes, but indeed measure the experience of interest.
“Accordingly, theories must describe in clear terms the relationship between the data we collect and the psychobiological [should read ‘cognitive phenomenological’] concepts we employ.”
Instead of writing “the psychobiological concepts we employ”, Sanders should have written “the cognitive phenomenology concepts we employ”.
I do not mean Cognitive Neuroscience, because of the way Cognitive Neuroscience is used wrongly and falsely to shut out a bona fide Cognitive Phenomenology approach.
Science must have Cognitive Neuroscience, BUT, not (any longer) at the expense of Cognitive Phenomenology.
Entheogen scholarship should include some coverage of Amanita and the ergot Kykeon hypothesis, but not (any longer) at the expense of:
Psilocybin sacred meals in non-eleusis mystery religions’ initiation.
Cognitive Neuroscience is ALWAYS used (has always been used) to eliminate a Cognitive Phenomenology approach, just like non-drug Meditation (as a doctrine, cultural values worldview, & practice) is ALWAYS misused (has always been misused and lied about) to eliminate and minimize Psilocybin.
Dominant Discourses
See Sanders vs. Replies as a battle between two discourses. WAYS of talking talking about meditation, mystic-state experiences, “therapy”, “healing”. Go to a shamanic culture and ask “Do you have mystical experiencing”, they say “No”.
The phrases ‘common core’ theory and ‘perennialism’
The James/ Stace/ Pahnke/ Williams/ Griffiths school claims Core Concept mysticism per perennial philosophy – find ‘perennial’ in:
Reply 1: Jylkka (American Chemical Society) – 0 hits on ‘perennial’
Reply 2: Breeksema & van Elk (American Chemical Society) – 1 hit on ‘perennial’
Reply 3: Lattin (Lucid.news) – _ hits on ‘perennial’
Reply 4: Kilham (Lucid.news) – _ hits on ‘perennial’
noetic (imparting important knowledge or insight), are
transient (they are experienced directly and subjectively), and are
characterized by ineffability (James compared it to describing the experience of love or music to someone who has experienced neither).” [given psychedelics on tap, that constraint fails to match our actual scenario, per Wilber’s Eye to Eye essay]
“In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers discussed whether MEs [mystical experiences] shared a common core or whether they are ultimately shaped by one’s cultural and religious background (for a review of this debate, see ref 5).
“Proponents of the common core theory, or perennialism, built on James’s key elements of MEs and identified additional characteristics:
transcendence of space and time;
feelings of unity and connectedness;
a sense of awe; and
positive emotions of love and peace.
In turn, this view has had a strong impact on theory and scale [psychedelic psychometrics questionnaire] development in the scientific study of mysticism.”
Sanders might write: We are not setting out with our scope of intent being doing scientific study of mysticism; we are striving to do scientific study of psychedelic states and psychedelic effects, which MIGHT include experiences which have been called “mystical”.
Reference 5: 5) Ralph Hood & R. W. J. (2019) The empirical study of mysticism in the book The Psychology of Religion (Spilka, B.[Bernard], and McIntosh, D. [Daniel] N., Eds.), Routledge. This garbled citation combines the editors of the 1st Edition with the date of the 2nd edition if you add 1 to that date. I have found the exact section heading in the 5th edition, so that is the one that this garbled citation is supposed to be pointing to. Amazon says “September 17, 2018”, which is 3.5 months earlier than 2019.
How a High Dose of Psilocybin Producing 39% Freakouts (in Griffiths 2011) Becomes 30% (in Griffiths 2016) for No Reason
Houot’s dissertation pointed out the 39% figure, I had taken great note of the 30% figure from some of the same questionnaire data by same institution, for the same dosage level, same questionnaires.
What did Griffiths have to do with math trickery to make 39% become 30% freakouts?
Is it the same math they used when picking ALL 13 [out of DED/Unpleasant’s 21 effects, ignoring and omitting 8 of 21 = 38% of negative effects] to add to CEQ’s Initial Item Pool:
“The 13 items of the 5DASC that constitute the ICC and ANX sub-scales were retained for the initial item pool for the CEQ” – Griffiths CEQ 2016
The 5D-ASC includes the 21-item 1994 DED Dread category, aka the Unpleasant high-level category of Studerus’ 11 Factors questionnaire – 8 items of which didn’t make the final cut for Studerus’ ANX or ICC low-level categories.
By strategically picking only the 7 ICC & 6 ANX low-level categories’ items, but not picking the entire 21 Unpleasant high-level category’s items, Griffiths magically got rid of 8 of 21 = 38% of negative psychedelic effects when constructing the CEQ’s Initial Item Pool.
Why did Griffiths, who could well have used 5D-ASC’s ‘A’ (Angst/Dread) dimension of 21 items, conflate 11-Factors with 5D-ASC?
Answer: In order to accidentally focus on Studerus’ patchwork new subset factors at a low level (13 negative effects items), instead of focusing on Dittrichs’ 5D-ASC’s innate DED category that’s at a high level (21 negative effects items).
By the time of the final CEQ set of items, Griffiths completely got rid of 10 of those 13 items, keeping only 3 out of 21 negative psychedelic effects.
Magic!
But we professional couch psychotherapist are all relieved that somehow, at the same time, their shiny new Grief category positively thrived, and grew and grew at every opportunity, becoming the biggest category of CEQ, while the Dread of Ego Dissolution (DED) items shrank and shrank at every turn, from 21, down to 13, then down to just 3 negative effects questions to gather data about.
Quote 1: Griffiths 2011: High Dose Produces 39% Freakouts
“Although volunteers were carefully screened and psychologically prepared, and close interpersonal support was provided during sessions, on questionnaires completed at the end of the session, 39% of participants (seven of 18) had extreme ratings of fear, fear of insanity, or feeling trapped at some time during the session.
Quote 2: Griffiths 2016: High Dose Produces 30% Freakouts
“Approximately 30% of participants in each of three highly controlled experimental studies (total sample: 69 participants and 204 sessions – Griffiths et al., 2006, 2011; Johnson et al., 2014) involving a high dose of psilocybin (0.429 mg/kg psilocybin) experienced marked periods of anxiety or fear, while between 17–39% experienced paranoia (Griffiths et al., 2006, 2011).” That passage is from article: The Challenging Experience Questionnaire: Characterization of challenging experiences with psilocybin mushrooms Frederick S Barrett, Matthew P Bradstreet, Jeannie-Marie S Leoutsakos, Matthew W Johnson, Roland R Griffiths 2016 https://www.academia.edu/33760114/The_Challenging_Experience_Questionnaire_Characterization_of_challenging_experiences_with_psilocybin_mushrooms
Break that down: 3 studies 69 participants 204 sessions
Griffiths et al., 2006,
Griffiths et al., 2011;
Johnson et al., 2014
The dosage is same: high dose of psilocybin: 0.429 mg/kg = 30mg/70kg
The institute is same: Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, at Johns Hopkins University.
To keep Matthew “Lose the Buddha statue” Johnson from spotting and removing the Buddha statue, they hid the Buddha statue in the monitor’s hair.
17–39% experienced paranoia (Griffiths et al., 2006, 2011).
What Math Trickery Did Griffiths Use to Reduce 39% (2011) Down to 30% (2016)?
Tricks with AND and OR give lots of opportunities to put lower or higher percentages in front of the reader.
My sarcastic math: An average of 17-39% on 3 studies experienced either dread and paranoia and panic, or mystic positive effects as well. WTF? useless pseudo-stats. Be specific.
Masters’ Thesis: Toward a Philosophy of Psychedelic Technology: An Exploration of Fear, Otherness, and Control (Houot 2019)
This dissertation points out that (unlike one Griffiths article that reports 30% of their high dose sessions are extreme panic/fear), “nearly 40%” are, per another Griffiths article.
Book: The Psychology Of Religion: Theoretical Approaches/An Empirical Approach
This section is where I figured out a garbled reference in a Breeksema article.
… one of several partial matches: The Psychology Of Religion: Theoretical Approaches 1st edition, By Bernard Spilka, Daniel Mcintosh [names match citation 5] https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-Of-Religion/Spilka-Mcintosh/p/book/9780813329475 Copyright year 1997 (not “2019), published November 22, 1996 “Theory in the psychology of religion is in a state of rapid development,” as Cybermonk puts together an early barebones website containing the Egodeath theory; the cybernetic theory of ego transcendence.
From same webpage: “Bernard Spilka is professor of psychology at the University of Denver and the co-editor or co-author of several books including Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach, second edition. Daniel N. McIntosh is assistant professor of psychology at the University of Denver.”
The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach Fifth Edition, Guilford Press [wrong edition if Routledge is right per the citation] by Ralph W. Hood Jr. (Author), Peter C. Hill (Author), Bernard Spilka (Author) Copyright page says 2018, Amazon page says September 17, 2018 (could fit w/ calling the section “2019”) https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Religion-Fifth-Empirical-Approach/dp/1462535984 – This book DOES have a section exactly headed: “The Empirical Study of Mysticism“, in chapter “Mysticism”: p. 360. Also section: Entheogens and Religious Experience Also section: The Need for Theory in the Psychology of Religion The citation differs from this book in 3 ways: publisher, date, editors names.
blurb:
“Keeping up with the rapidly growing research base, the leading graduate-level psychology of religion text is now in a fully updated fifth edition.
“It takes a balanced, empirically driven approach to understanding the role of religion in individual functioning and social behavior.
“Integrating research on:
numerous different faith traditions
the quest for meaning
links between religion and biology
religious thought, belief, and behavior across the lifespan
experiential dimensions of religion and spirituality
the social psychology of religious organizations [= the Meditation Hucksters and their battle to dishonor Psilocybin?]
connections to coping, adjustment, and mental disorder.
“Chapter-opening quotations and topical research boxes enhance the readability of this highly instructive text.
New to This Edition *New topics: cognitive science of religion; religion and violence; and groups that advocate terrrist tactics. *The latest empirical findings, including hundreds of new references. *Expanded discussion of atheism and varieties of nonbelief. *More research on religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, particularly Islam. *State-of-the-art research methods, including techniques for assessing neurological states.”
/ end 5th edition blurb. See Also publisher quotes/blurbs/reviews.
Heading
p. 360, start of section “The Empirical Study of Mysticism”: “In 1899, no word had been used more loosely than ‘mysticism’.“
In 1893, the word ‘mystical’ meant “woo” in the broadest sense, like the expression “mystical sh!t” in 2000.
Compare the breadth of the two volumes titled “Contemporary Esotericism”.
In 1839, ‘mystical’ meant like “newage” or “woo” – as broad as possible.
But, their fix, per Vivekananda & Wm James, was bad: narrow the word ‘mystical’ to mean “positive unity experience” per Advaita Vedanta, first, foremost, and exclusively.
Heading
Good section opening. Interesting.
I think it quotes the book I was looking for!
I think maybe it was 1991 book, Bernard McGinn, page 1 footnote “of course, no college student has any way of accessing the mystic state.” Living under a rock, wildly out of touch.
Typical mystic. Trying to confirm the quote, I’m looking at Intro chapter in book The Foundations of Mysticism https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Mysticism-Origins-Presence-Christian/dp/0824514041/ (2002 printing, cover looks right) – warm, but can’t confirm this is the right book where I believe around 2002 page 1 had a footnote about students having no way to have mystical experience.
p. xiv: “there can be no direct access to experience for the historian.”
What a meaningless point, when the historian has a frosting jar of ergot on tap. I couldn’t confirm this is the right book I remember, by McGinn.
“Its core tenet is that theindividual experiencing self is ultimately pure awareness mistakenly identified with body and the senses, and non-different from Ātman/Brahman, the highest Self or Reality.
“Advaita means “non-secondness“, rendered as “nonduality“.
“This refers to the Oneness of Brahman, the only real Existent, and is often equated with monism.
“Moksha (liberation from ‘suffering’ and rebirth) is attained through
knowledge of Brahman,
recognizing the illusoriness of the phenomenal world and disidentification from body-mind and the notion of ‘doership‘, and
by acquiring knowledge of one’s true identityas Atman/Brahman, self-luminous awareness or Witness-consciousness.”
todo: Move heading “Dominant Discourses” to Idea Development 15 page. Useful concept. Move to the section: Top 10 Self-Defeating, Dead-End Narratives that Must Be Overthrown https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/2022/09/03/idea-development-page-15/#Top-10-Self-Defeating-Narratives Add bunk narratives: “Cognitive Neuro-Reductionism”. “CSR Cognitive Science of Religion”, taken as ordinary state Cog Sci explaining ordinary state Religion.
How to get rid of Cognitive Phenomenology? Push Cognitive Neuroscience.
How to get rid of Psilocybin? Push Meditation.
Definition of ‘Meditation’ in My Writings
By ‘meditation’, unless otherwise specified, I mean a huge wrong arbitrary bunk raft of assumptions.
My Connotations and Definition of the Unadorned Word ‘Meditation’
When I write ‘meditation’ alone, I always mean the prejudiced, biased cultural values-doctrine that non-drug meditation is the source of authority for mystic revelation.
“When I say’ meditation’, usually I mean bunk lying non-drug meditation that tries to steal credit from plants and then disparage the plants and deny that plants are the origin of religion and the inspiration driving religion.”
All Experience Is Ineffable, to those who don’t have the experience that’s being described – Sanders
I never thought I’d see the day someone articulates my point against the “ineffable’ argument/ excuse/ characterization about the intense mystic state:
Sanders & Zijlmans in Moving Past Mysticism wrote that all experience is ineffable, to those who don’t have the experience that’s being described. Fits with essay Eye to Eye by Ken Wilber.
Newbies describing their complete [newbie] mystical experience to other newbies: they all agree “it’s ineffable”. This is all pre- Egodeath-theory ways of talking & thinking.
The Egodeath theory (the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism) replaces all this talk and construct, “mystical experiencing is ineffable”.
As long as all you have is possibilism-thinking (the “possibilism” mental worldmodel), you might say (unscientifically) that the eternalism experiential mode is “ineffable”.
That’s why naive possibilism-thinking calls eternalism-thinking, or the eternalism experiential mode, “ineffable”.
The eternalism experiential mode, truly, cannot be described effectively by the conceptual network that is the “possibilism” mental worldmodel.
The limitation isn’t language, though; the limitation is that your language is limited to naive possibilism-thinking and you lack the mystic-state suited conceptual vocabulary of eternalism-thinking.
Systemic meaning-shifting from the first concept network to the second concept network is described, hazily/roughly, by Alan Watts in Way of Zen.
Article: Researchers Debate the Role of Mysticism in Psychedelic Science (Lattin, Sep. 2021)
“If science states that psychedelics induce mystical experiences that are key to their therapeutic action, this is too easily misinterpreted as research advocating a role for the supernatural or divine,” write James W. Sanders of the University of Amsterdam and Josjan Zijlmans of the Amsterdam University Medical Centers.”
Meanwhile, in the U.S., one of the nation’s leading psychedelic researchers has issued a similar warning about the vague and “sloppy” use of terms like “consciousness.”
“This danger is scientists and clinicians imposing their personal religious and spiritual beliefs on the practice of psychedelic medicine,” Johnson wrote, citing a pervasive “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.’ ”
“Richards has worked with Matt Johnson at Johns Hopkins, and he was not surprised by his younger colleague’s paper.
“God bless, Matt,” Richards said. “He is a professor in the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, and he hates the word ‘consciousness.’ ”
“We’ve always had a statue of Buddha in our treatment room at Johns Hopkins.
“When we run a session, Matt always takes the statue out.
“But that doesn’t stop the spiritual experiences from happening.”
That’s no contradiction of Johnson. Johnson clearly (not confusingly) wrote that the patients – not the guides – need to bring the symbols, if symbols are brought into the treatment room.
Johnson wrote that he’s not against religious symbols in the treatment room – but they must be brought by the client, not by the researcher/guide.
Principled, consistent, explicit eternalism is the scientific basis, not a mythology basis or a Walter Stace-type mysticism basis.
“Mystical experiences frequently precede decreases in human suffering or increased functioning.
“Therapies that include the ingestion of psychoactive substances in supportive environments often lead to improvements that correlate with the magnitude of the mystical experiences generated.
“A close look at these phenomena from a philosophy of science perspective might put empiricists in a quandary.
“Arguments with critics of the import of these mystical experiences, prohibitionists, or others who are apprehensive about psychedelic-assisted treatments, might prove awkward or difficult given the tacit assertion that the mystical genuinely exists.
“The assumption might even dampen theorizing in ways that remain outside of theorists’ awareness.
“The predicament might lack the epistemic humility ideal for good science as well.
“Nevertheless, abandoning the construct of mystical experiences would require ignoring compelling, replicated empirical work.
“We argue that a version of philosophical fictionalism that draws on research in logic and linguistics can help investigators engage in this discourse without implying a belief in the mystical.
“Comparable approaches have proven helpful in mathematics and empiricism more broadly.
“Mystical fictionalism could help theorists view reports of mystical experiences as true even if the mystical fails to be veridical.
“The approach creates an expressive advantage that could assist researchers and theorists eager to refine our understanding of mystical experiences and improve psychedelic-assisted treatments.
“Mystical fictionalism might also inspire novel looks at correlates of mystical experiences that might serve as mediators of their effects, potentially generating models with comparable explanatory power that sidestep the need for a fictionalist approach.”
Article: How to End the Mysticism Wars in Psychedelic Science (Letheby 2024)
Article: The Most Controversial Paper in the History of Psychedelic Research May Never See the Light of Day: Was the Psychedelic Renaissance Led by Science or Faith? (Kitchens, Mar. 2025) [subscribers]
Leading Chemist David Nichols Says Meditation Came from Psychedelics, Argues Against Meditation Huckster
A typical meditation salesman, Carlos, claimed to Nichols that Meditation was discovered first, and later Psilocybin was used as a simulation attempt. That’s exactly backwards, argues Nichols.
We meditation hucksters are conditionally ok with psychedelics only if psychedelics-adding meditators glorify and worship non-drug meditation – not Psilocybin – as “the real thing”, the “original form” — worshipping non-drug meditation as your ultimate authority and point of reference and time commitment and god and savior.
The Meditation Hucksters are ok with psychedelics — as long as you frame Meditation as “the real thing” and Psilocybin the mere tacked-on adjunct incidental nothing, while you BOW DOWN to non-drug meditation.
You know that you’re being B.S.’d when Mr. Meditation Huckster claims that (glorious!) non-drug meditation does the exact same thing as Psilocybin.
The B.S.’ing becomes clear when the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism reveals the full effects of Psilocybin, which Meditation can’t match.
Meditation can (could|might|may) produce the exact same effect as two bowls of cubensis three hours apart, ten times,resulting in BECOMING PERFECTED AND IMMORTAL: undergoing mental worldmodel transformation from possibilism to eternalism.
Non-drug meditation could|can|might|may give the exact same effects as two bowls of Cubensis re-dosed, ten sessions.
The Ultimate “Effect” of Psilocybin: achieving mental worldmodel transformation from possibilism to eternalism.
Non-drug Meditation totally does that. 😑 Gives the exact same effect, but actually, Meditation is much better than Psilocybin, because [play back the standard psychedelics-diminishing stock dominant narrative/discourse]
You’re allowed to unnaturally and artificially import alien, inauthentic psychedelics into meditation (which is the authentic way).
Psychedelics can simulate the same effects as the real thing, which is non-drug meditation.
When adding psychedelics to real meditation, psychedelics are a mere abnormal supplement to venerable, glorious non-drug meditation.
Non-drug meditation is the source of all authority.
Psilocybin must be measured against the gold standard authoritative definitive reference of what meditation authentically is: non-drug meditation.
Article: Psychedelic Induced Transpersonal Experiences, Therapies, and Their Implications for Transpersonal Psychology (Roberts, 2013)
This Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology (2013) entry on Psychedelics by Thomas Roberts & Michael Winkelman is a GREAT summary and explanation of how psychedelics historically fit, levels of psychotherapy, Maslow’s tacking-on “Self-Transcendence” in his 1968 2nd Edition Preface of his book totally diss’ing mere Self-Actualization, diminishing it:
“In the Preface to the second edition of Toward a Psychology of Being (1968, pages iii–iv) Maslow reported this new top to his needs hierarchy” – p. 4, adding “Self-Transcendence” above “Self-Actualization”.
Against Psychoanalysis: Groffian Psychedelic Literalistic Memory Processing
“Kent is critical of superstitious aspect of New Age and psychedelia. I agree that taking them as literal truth about reality is wrongheaded.
“Frames Grof, Leary, Huxley, Hofmann as science. For them psychedelic action happens in head, but later New Age superstitious psychedelicists ascribe agency to external objects being things.”
Stan Grof is “Science”? Grof’s paradigm is psychedelics-amplified couch psychoanalysis abreaction memory-accessing & processing of your physical birth trauma.
If remembering your childhood memories to “process” them through “psychoanalysis” is valid and good, then the ultimate and best version is to amplify that approach by using psychedelics to access one’s earliest possible memories: your traumatic memory of your literal physical birth, which is what’s ultimately causing your ordinary-state maladies & altered-state bad trip.
All very scientific. 😑 🧠 🔬 📊 🔶
The Roberts & Winkelman article Psychedelic Induced Transpersonal Experiences, Therapies, and Their Implications for Transpersonal Psychology is extremely clear in specifying the Psychedelic Transpersonal Psychology paradigm, so that I can better contrast the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism as a superior explanatory framework.
The Egodeath theory vs. Meditation, and Against Psychotherapy, and Against Stan Grof “Physical Birth Memory Retrieval for Processing = totally explains what challenging trips are about“
This Roberts & Winkelman article is so great, it summarizes clearly so that I can critique and identify exactly why I reject Grof’s literalistic BPM misused analogy:
“Your bad trip is because you are remembering your physical birth trauma, for us professional couch psychoanalyst Psychologists to “process” your trauma memories”.
If ordinary-state psychotherapy accesses childhood memories to process them, let’s take that to the extreme: add psychedelics, opening up your literal physical birth trauma memories.
Paradigm: Abreaction memory access/processing – that is the paradigm of “Transpersonal Psychology” – not the Benny Shanon type of Cognitive Phenomenology per the Egodeath theory/ the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism.
Ken Wilber is against limiting to Psychology (even the transpersonal brand); Wilber works within Integral Theory, not Transpersonal Psychology.
The Roberts & Winkelman article is about the psychedelic history of About the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology & psychedelics.
“This chapter presents a neurophenomenological model of psychedelic-induced transpersonal experiences, therapeutic processes that they induce, and their implications for transpersonal theory.
“The pharmacological effects of psychedelics also enable them to address a range of psychological and emotional maladies [negative psychology, not positive psychology].
“In addition to indigenous and shamanic approaches, there are four main types of psychedelic sessions:
psycholytic and
psychedelic—which developed from Grof’s work—
entactogenic, and
pharmacological.
“transpersonal psychology could exist without psychedelics, it may be just as safe to say that transpersonal psychology would not exist without psychedelics.
“The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the multidisciplinary implications of psychedelics for the sciences and society.”
/ end winkelman abstract
Caution: Groffian “Science” & “Psychology” here means the Freudian couch psychoanalysis paradigm, amplified by psychedelics — not a pure psychedelics phenomenology basis/origin, like the real Science that’s the Egodeath theory / the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism.
[At “transpersonal … psychology”, don’t read “Cog Sci”; read as: “professional psychotherapy expanding the Freud paradigm supplemented by psychedelics to recover and ‘process’ the earliest memories thereby accessed”]
[abreactive/ abreaction: the expression and consequent release of a previously repressed emotion, achieved through reliving the experience that caused it (typically through hypnosis or suggestion).]
Fadiman abstract condensed by Cybermonk:
“This chapter considers how psychedelic substances affect consciousness, using the lens of a transpersonal approach to psychology.
“Transpersonal psychology‘s point of view is suitable to grapple with this question due to its continuing interest in altered states of consciousness & its long-standing relationship with psychedelic research.
“founders of both the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and Association of Transpersonal Psychology were involved in psychedelic research prior to the founding of the discipline, and discovered that the emerging field resonated with their own worldviews.
“mainstream psychology distanced itself from this area of study, perhaps in part because so many reports of psychedelic-induced effects include data historically shunned, denied, or pathologized by science [“Science” = couch psychotherapy ‘Psychology’]: out-of-body experiences, spiritual or transcendent states of consciousness, disidentification with one’s personality, and healing.
“recent thaw in mainstream psychology‘s stance toward psychedelic research
“skittishness about taking the data and its implications seriously.”
/ end Fadiman abstract
Against Mysticism as a Basis for Explanation of Mystical Experiencing
OVERCONFIDENT VENERATION AND OVERSELLING OF STACE’S “MYSTICISM” LEXICON AND EXPLANATORY FRAMEWORK
Science as the basis from which to explain non-science
Sanders is NOT against the experiencing which is called mystic; they’re specifically against the “mysticism” framework & lexicon per Walter Stace 1960 as used by Roland Griffiths.
Kilham in Mystical Experience Defines Psychedelics is misrepresenting Sanders’ article Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science.
Sanders isn’t against mystical experiencing, or science explaining mystical experiencing.
Sanders is against making the interpretive framework and lexicon called “mysticism” the basis on which to explain mystical experiencing.
Kilham is a meditation huckster, not trustworthy; claims that meditation gives the exact same effect as Psilocybin, and then states that Psilocybin is more potent and reliable than meditation.
Jordan Peterson (in his YouTube channel interview) called out Griffiths for that exact self-contradiction.
Wouter Hanegraaff isn’t against religionism (the religious practice of Esotericism).
Hanegraaff is against misusing religionism as if it can serve as a basis for academic historiography.
The two distinct legs model of the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism
To scientifically explain religious mythology, don’t make myth my basis; make the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism my basis.
The two distinct legs model of the Egodeath theory:
In February 1997, I published the Core theory outline spec, which is the scientific foundation that explains myth.
In October 2002, I announced the Radical Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion.
In 2006, I published my main article, about mytheme decoding in terms of the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence — including loose cognitive binding, mental model transformation, mental world models, and (new) how myth is metaphor describing those referents by analogy.
In 2013, 2015, 2020, 2022, I extended decoding of myth using my science basis.
When I say “Science”, I largely mean “STEM” as a mentality and approach to figuring stuff out and explaining it (communicating about it, expressing as an explanatory model).
The Egodeath theory Provides the Useful, Relevant STEM-type explanatory model of ego transcendence that I needed in 1985-1987
I personally needed and required a STEM-type explanatory model of ego transcendence, and the mystics failed to deliver that.
the mystics = the “mysticism” framework & lexicon per Walter Stace 1960, which psychedelic psychometrics claims as its “scientific” foundation
So, I myself stepped up, and started from the least-poor presentation available, Alan Watts’ book The Way of Zen, augmented by Ken Wilber’s books to date (1985-1988) and a tiny handful of 5-25 books, including Modern Physics textbook re: block universe, and created the successful STEM-type explanatory model of ego transcendence in January 1988.
The Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism =
the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence
the Egodeath theory
the maximal entheogen theory of religion
the Core Cybernetic theory & the Entheogen Mytheme theory
Motivation for this Page
It’s surprising how much my criticisms and recommendations / advocacies match or align with those of Sanders & Zijlmans in the article Moving Past Mysticism in Psychedelic Science.
What they mean by ‘mysticism’ pejoratively is what I mean by ‘mysticism’ pejoratively.
I have the Egodeath theory; the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism – they don’t.
The Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism answers in a completed, mature way, Sanders’ call for an alternative to making mysticism the foundation,
Wouter Hanegraaff: “don’t make mysticism or religious myth the foundation for scientifically conducted historiography”.
also, minor note, I renamed the Egodeath theory to the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism
Your interpretation of your experience is incorrect
Experience vs. interpretation. My interpretation of your experience is correct. Your interpretation of your experience is incorrect. You experienced the eternalism experiential mode, but you interpreted that experience throufgh the lens of framework of possibilism-thinking and ineffabilism mysticism supernaturalism or vague hazy freewill fog or causal-chain determinism.
Immediately before reading this article, I made voice-recording comments (Jan 14 2023).
My contrast between the Egodeath theory vs. the popular predominant view matches the critique in this article.
“two Dutch researchers warn against the emergence of a “risky blend of mysticism and science.””
Eye to Eye (Ken Wilber)
The Eye to Eye essay in the book Eye to Eye is important.
Wilber’s essay, which he affirmed and praised in this Revised book edition, advocates 3 levels of shared empirical observation and I say, in all 3 levels, apply STEM-type rationality, in the loose cognitive state.
Wilber says use all 3:
eye of body
eye of mind (ie reason in ordinary state)
eye of spirit (ie altered state)
Assumes “eye of mind” = ordinary state, and “eye of spirit” = altered state.
Junk Science vs. Junk Mysticism — and Then There’s the Egodeath Theory
Science & Spirituality Battle Between Xer Johnson and Boomer Griffith & Richards
Johnson Declared He’s Not Onboard with Worship of Meditation Religion
A clustr of about 5 articles perfect for me to cover in voice recordings and print them and markup and post about them and link to them.
I just need to copy entire articles then delete and highlight parts and comment. For now here are tiny selected portions.
I Agree with What the Anti-Mystical Psychedelic Scientists (Sanders & Zijlmans) Are Actually Saying!
They and I condemn the Stace “ineffability” premise, and we demand (& The Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism provides) useful, scientifically proper articulate explanation and lexicon.
Egodeath Theory Doubling Down on Psychedelic Eternalism – Commitment to Asserting the Particular Position
The psychedelic loose cognitive association binding experiential mode is the eternalism experiential mode.
Other people double down on psychedelic possibilism, or poorly formed psychedelic eternalism.
The Egodeath theory is well-formed, explicit, pointed, principled psychedelic eternalism.
Dogmatic anti-dogmatists are a walking massive self-contradiction: incoherence is their god, is what they are narrowly pushing.
Psychedelic Eternalism as Specific Psychedelic Science vs. Vague Psychedelic Possibilism Mysticism
Popular psychedelic spirituality is vague and self-contradictory and unhelpful. They sell this as “open, nonjudgmental, and saying everyone is right”.
Judging that nonjudgmental is better than judgmental is the worlds most judgmental and self-contradictory and irresponsible position, a non-position position.
The biggest favor the Egodeath theory can do everyone is to be particular and specific and crystal clear.
The worst crime per the Egodeath theory is to be unclear, to waffle, to be vague.
Prevarication and doubletalk (like Wasson and everyone) is the worst.
If you say “everyone is right”, you’re incoherent, self-contradictory, and unhelpful. It’s you against you.
Everyone asserts hazy possibilism mysticism, or hazy eternalism mysticism. the Egodeath theory isn’t hazy possibilism mysticism.
The Egodeath theory isn’t hazy eternalism mysticism.
The Egodeath theory is specific Psychedelic Eternalism.
The Egodeath theory firmly, specifically, pointedly, and exclusively asserts psychedelic eternalism.
My Previous Discussions About Stepping Up to Scientifically Explain, Not Omit, Mystical Experiencing (“Psychedelic Scientists Mystic Wusses”)
tbd, around Sep 2022, includes Egodeath Mystery Show voice recordings, might not be much text posted here.
I mocked and insulted weakling wimpy so-called psychedelic scientists (they can’t handle mysticism, so they omit it), but I should have read the actual article by Sanders, which actually resonates with many of my points.
wusses – try a Find on that word here at this site.
Might find a description of an episode of podcast Egodeath Mystery Show, either as a page/post dedicated to the episode, or possibly in Idea Development page 14 or 15.
Book: The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James’ Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment (Bricklin 2016)
Bricklin’s book is part of Consciousness Studies, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, & Journal of Consciousness Studies, and was reviewed in draft by Benny Shanon & Ramesh Balsekar.
Balsekar asserted no-free-will as enlightenment, among the Ken Wilber Integral Theory crowd.
Benny Shanon = Ayahuasca from a Psychedelics Cognitive Phenomenology approach like the Egodeath theory.
Such books by Sam Harris, Balsekar, Shanon, Campbell, and Bricklin don’t bring the ideas together tightly and simply, as the Egodeath theory does.
Keyboard Shortcuts/Acronyms
Naming the Core theory vs. Mytheme theory
After the 1997 Core theory, doc’d at website fully in 1998, mine is not a history-based approach; it’s a mytheme decoding approach (1999+, and the 1988-1998 Rock Lyrics decoding).
1985-1998: Core theory – not History, not Mythemes (except in Rock lyrics, but that’s not formally part of the Core theory).
Best I can figure, 1998 was website buildout and STARTING to investigate religious history to corroborate the Egodeath theory (later differentiated as “Core”).
The “corroboration” would become designated as the Mytheme theory, and the thing corroborated would become the Core theory.
what keyboard shortcuts expand as “the Core theory” and “the Mytheme theory”? aka the Entheogen Mytheme theory. For my personal purposes, it’s effective to say “the Core theory” & “the Mytheme theory”; with:
‘Mytheme’ defined as entheogen scholarship, history, myth, also now incor’g the Rock lyrics decoding back to 1988 including the later part of the Phase 1 Core period.
Phase 1 = 1985-1998.
Rock lyrics decoding period = 1988-1998. Yet assign that not to Core theory, but to Mytheme theory.
Similarly also, 1995 = reading all Richard Smoley’s Gnosis magazine issues (obtained all around 1999).
In 1988 I deliberately started reading “all knowledge”, for the purposes of communicating my completed/closed Core theory, but I didn’t write about “all knowledge” (history of ideas, myth, metaphor) that until 1999+, because I wanted to only express the Theory in terms of current, direct referents. Not History of Ideas, not myth & metaphor.
I didn’t learn about entheogen scholarship until 1999, though I researched “What psychedelic is the scrolls in Revelation?” starting potentially in June 1986.
Myth decoding = 1999+.
‘Core’ defined as “block universe/ loose cognitive association binding/ mental worldmodel transformation, etc).
1999-
the entheogen Mytheme theory temt
[temt] the Entheogen Mytheme theory test: the Entheogen Mytheme theory, the Entheogen Mytheme theory. The core theory as of Jan. 1988 conjoins:
block-universe eternalism & frozen worldlines,
loosecog,
mental model transformation,
the two worldmodels.
See the Principles (section headings ) of my handwritten 1988 Minnesota draft.
My handwritten 1988 Minnesota draft: The Theory of Ego Transcendence.
My handwritten August 1988 Minnesota draft: The Theory of Ego Transcendence, = my 1997 Core theory summary specification, same/ equivalent set of Principles; theory-components & Core Concepts like my Core Concepts page of 2020, vs. my Key Mythemes page of 2020. https://egodeaththeory.wordpress.com/nav/#flagship-The-Egodeath-Theory
Upper left: laser printer late 1988 revision of same.
Upper right: early 1989 art blank book (for Transcendent Knowledge idea development) with ink pen instead of Pentel P-205 engineers’ mechanical pencil.
the Core theory of Psychedelic Eternalism; defined by my 1997 Principia Cybernetica website outline summary, which lacks entheogen history scholarship and lacks religious mythology decoding to map to the core reference experience.
“Core” as specified by referring to the 1997 outline, means “not entheogen history” and “not myth decoding”.
My 1997 core theory is all based in and limited to being expressed as current 20th C, and it’s all directly articulated.
The Core theory of [within] the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism: “Core” means no history, no analogies (no mythemes-decoding, no Rock lyrics).
The Mytheme theory of [within] the Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism, includes (naturally) History; entheogen scholarship; entheogen history scholarship.
The field of entheogen scholarship is inherently by definition, a theory whose explanandum is religious myth.
The purpose of the field of entheogen scholarship is to explain the actual referent of religious mythology.
Incorrectly, entheogen scholarship claims or mis-identifies the referent of myth as “entheogens”.
The song Red Barchetta by Rush — it is CRUDE to say that “the real referent of the song Red Barchetta is ergot”.
That is inadequately precise. It’s a wrong answer, it is vague and crude and insufficient.
More precisely, only this identification of the referent is adequate & sufficient; only this referent-identification meets the requirements for clarity and pointing to the real actual thing:
The song does NOT point to ergot; the song in fact points to ergot EXPERIENCING.
That is a major, significant difference.
You fail to comprehend the song if you identify its referent as “ergot”.
You comprehend the song only if you identifiy and recognize its referent as ergot experiencing.
The real referent of the song Red Barchetta is ergot experiencing.
The actual referent of myth [same as inspired Rock lyrics] is entheogenic experiencing – especially, ultimately, the gradual process of transformation of the mental worldmodel – transformation from possibilism to eternalism. What’s the
The main “effect” of Psilocybin is transformation of the mental worldmodel from possibilism to eternalism.
The Mytheme theory of Psychedelic Eternalism (no need there to say ‘entheogen theory’ b/c already ‘psychedelic’).
I get automatic all-caps variant for free – unless the expansion is mixed case.
Blurb by Ralph W. Hood, Jr., coauthor of The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach:
“A comprehensive exploration of the philosophical issues raised by mysticism.
“This work is a comprehensive study of the philosophical issues raised by mysticism.
“Mystics claim to experience reality in a way not available in normal life, a claim which makes this phenomenon interesting from a philosophical perspective.
“Richard H. Jones’s inquiry focuses on the skeleton of beliefs and values of mysticism: knowledge claims made about the nature of reality and of human beings; value claims about what is significant and what is ethical; and mystical goals and ways of life.
“Jones engages language, epistemology, metaphysics, science, and the philosophy of mind.
“Methodological issues in the study of mysticism are also addressed.
“Examples of mystical experience are drawn chiefly from Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, but also from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Daoism.
“This is a significant extension of the seminal work by Walter Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy.
“That work has stimulated much literature, all of which Jones manages to review here.
“He criticallyextends Stace’s universal core and embeds it [the ‘common core’ hyp.] in a sophisticated discussion of the extent, range, and metaphysical implications of mysticism.”
unclear / ungramm:
Jones extends Stace’s mysticism common core.
Jones embeds Stace’s mysticism common core in a sophisticated discussion of:
The extent of mysticism.
The range of mysticism.
The metaphysical implications of mysticism.
Article: This Is Your Priest on Drugs (Michael Pollan, May 2025)
This Is Your Priest on Drugs Michael Pollan, May 19, 2025 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/26/this-is-your-priest-on-drugs [subscribers] – If you are able to view entire article, you might want to Save As, Print (try 75% size), or Save As PDF – if you go in again, d/k if you have access to it.
I was able to access the full article and Save and Print it.
Hunt Priest, Ligare psychedelic Christian org.
Hopkins/NYU: Religious Professionals Study of 2015, might be published soon in 2025.
Charles Stang emphasized: Psychedelics give a religious experience, but beware: can be much more challenging than than WHITEWASHED Hopkins marketing.
Psychedelic Science conference in Denver in 2023.
Reverend Joe Welker, a Presbyterian pastor in Vermont complained that the study was part of a strategy to integrate psychedelics into mainstream religion. I say Christianity should re-integrate its psychedelic source of Holy Spirit; do not disparage the Holy Spirit – Michael Hoffman.
The Johns Hopkins Institutional Review Board (I.R.B.) is charged with protecting participants in human trials.
Many participants signed an open letter disagreeing with Joe Welker.
I disagree with Welker’s framing – I have different cautions for the Church.
Matthew Johnson objected that Roland Griffiths wanted psychedelic research to influence religious groups, and contacted the I.R.B.
I am not too keen on Welker’s angle – he criticizes people for RE-INTRODUCING Psilocybin into Christianity.
It might SOUND like we’ve been trying to find mushroom evidence in Christianity since 1952.
But, so very late as Jan. 2025, I discovered in Day 1 & 4 of Creation, in Great Canterbury Psalter, perfect-shaped mushrooms, indicated as Liberty Cap, Panaeolus, Cubensis, and Amanita, point at the pans of the {balance scale} that God the Creator holds in Day 1 Let there be Light, with God holding an open book.
Crop and Annotations by Michael Hoffman, Jan. 13, 2025
I proved that we have not even started to look for mushrooms in Christianity.
Similarly, in ANOTHER image source that entheogen scholars have been covering since 1998, Bernward Doors & Column, in 2025 I found mushroom imagery that Brown was practically touching in his 2016 book photo, that no one else found, because they were too busy ritually re-telling their constructed narrative tale of “big bad Church suppressed into heretical groups”, to preoccupied to open their eyes and see and report the mushroom imagery evidence – hold the narrative overlay, please!
Evidence for what? Suppressed alien infiltration of the kiddie Amanita into the heart of the church? No. Simply, evidence for Psilocybin mushrooms in Christian history.
Hold the heavy-handed obscuring overlap, stop constructing your fabricated barrier wall of “mainstream tradition vs. closed heretical groups”.
FORBIDDEN WORDS for 2nd-generation entheogen scholarship (the Explicit Psilocybin paradigm):
tradition
mainstream
underground
sects
cults
communities
groups
suppressed
oppression
secret
hidden
These constructions have NOT helped to find evidence; they have been abused to prevent finding evidence, putting a lower priority on finding evidence and putting top priority on ritual retelling of the narrative overlay,
“The big bad church suppressed kiddie Amanita, isn’t that terrible?!” No, I really DGAF about fkking Amanita, which is not even a psychedelic, and isn’t illegal.
What Allegro-Ruck OUGHT to care about is full repeal of Psilocybin Prohibition, rolling back to the non-existence of laws.
Letcher p. 35-36: Various writers have suggested cult, secretly, oppression, hidden, secret cult, surreptitiously slipped in.
There are add’l examples eg color tauroctony on the cover of Entheos 3 – no mention of the lib cap in Mithras’ right leg.
The 1952-2024 efforts were so negative, so loaded with the Allegro-Ruck anti-Christian demonization, that any effort to find evidence was cancelled out by Ruck’s extreme effort to construct a barrier wall and fakely reframe as “evidence for heretical use of The Mushroom — kiddie Amanita — alien infiltration”.
Ruck contradicts himself because “tail wag dog”:
It is much more important to Ruck to ritually re-tell his narrative of suppression, than to quietly hand over the raw evidence, hold the narrative PLEASE!
Stop re-framing as evidence for alien infiltration of the [infantile] Amanita via heretical sects, given center stage by Ruck.
Andy Letcher in 2006 book Shroom disproved the Allegro-Ruck 1st-generation entheogen scholarship (the Secret Amanita paradigm), by using a single image from 2nd-generation entheogen scholarship (the Explicit Psilocybin paradigm).
Astounding Omissions of Negative Psychedelic Effects from the Challenging Experiences Questionnaire’s (CEQ’s) Initial Item Pool – This Closed Science Is Pseudo-Science
News Flash! Apparently Griffiths Considers the HRS Questionnaire’s Effect “It was difficult to control my thoughts” as “Not Challenging”!!
Discovered/realized 8pm January 13, 2023, Cybermonk.
— that Griffiths looked at the HRS question “It was difficult to control my thoughts” and reckoned “Nope, not potentially a challenging experience. Omit from Initial Item Pool.”
Combine that with “We would NOT expect that HRS’ Volition category of effects are potentially significantly challenging.” (CEQ article Griffiths 2016)
No surprise that Griffiths, who defined in Science-based scientific terms, what exactly and scientifically constitutes “a complete [newbie] mystical experience”, cannot even IMAGINE that “It was difficult to control my thoughts” is challenging.
Motivation for This Page/Post
This staggering realization warrants a dedicated announcement, it’s on the same order as Griffiths’ omitting Question 54, “I was afraid to lose my self-control” from the CEQ Initial Item Pool and final set of CEQ items.
I did a whole investigation driven by the HUGE omission of 1994 OAV question 54, “I was afraid to lose my self-control.”
Today, I found an equally massive, shocking, stunning omission:
Griffiths chose not to add Rick Strassman’s HRS question “It was difficult to control my thoughts” to the CEQ’s Initial Item Pool – unbelievable! inconceivable!
“It was difficult” is not challenging??
Griffiths has NO IDEA what control-challenges are, and cannot even imagine or comprehend what such challenges would be; the possibility of control loss constituting a challenge.
Griffiths is doing a massive anti-Science sanitizing and whitewashing, even during the early relatively generous phase of forming of the Initial Item Pool of 64 items from the 3 main questionnaires.
Retraction of My Error: Griffiths Team Did Not Do a Decent Job Picking the Initial Item Pool
I said and wrote that CEQ team did a decent job of picking the Initial Item Pool of 64 challenging effects from 3 questionnaires.
I was wrong. Or they were only relatively decent in picking items for the CEQ’s Initial Item Pool.
Closed Science Is Pseudo-Science: Only Insiders Are Allowed to Access Psychedelic Psychometrics “Science”
Caveat: this Pseudo-Science of Psychedelic Psychometrics, which stands or falls with the “scientific” basis of Walter Stace’s 1960 book Mysticism and Philosophy, is CLOSED SCIENCE.
Unlike real Science, “the public” is not able to and not allowed to see the HRS questionnaire and which items are in which categories and tally the items.
“Sorry, our Science field that we fabricated behind closed doors (and hid behind the obscuring cloak of vague math, never discussing the actual effects that we omit and delete) is copyrighted, so there’s no correction mechanism via public Science.”
No One at the Bridge: Not Challenging
Artist: Rush Song: No One at the Bridge Year: 1975 – same year as Dittrich’s APZ questionnaire, which has 22 questions forming in 1985 the ‘A’ category of O/A/V: Oceanic Boundlessness/ Angst (Dread of Ego Dissolution (DED)) / Visionary Restructuralization.
9. I had difficulty in distinguishing important from unimportant things 32. My thinking was constantly being interrupted by insignificant thoughts 40. My own feelings seemed strange to me as though they did not belong to me 44. I felt tormented without knowing exactly why 55. I felt like a robot 56. My surroundings seemed peculiarly strange to me 64. I felt threatened without realizing by what 66. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own 71. I was afraid without being able to say exactly why 83. I felt like a marionette 91. Everything around me was happening so fast that I could no longer follow what was really going on 105. I stayed frozen in a very unnatural position for quite a long time 107. I had difficulty making even the smallest decision 110. I felt as though I were paralyzed 131. Things around me appear distorted to me 133. Time passed more slowly than usual 136. I was not able to complete a thought; my thoughts repeatedly became disconnected 141. I felt isolated from everything and everyone 148. It seemed to me that I no longer have any feelings 156. It seemed to me as though there were an invisible wall between me and my surroundings 157. I observed myself as though I were a stranger 158. I felt a total emptiness in my head
54. I was afraid to lose my self-control. 3. I felt surrendered to dark powers. 12. I felt tormented. 59. Time passed tormentingly slow. 36. I experienced an unbearable emptiness. 55. I stayed frozen in a very unnatural position for quite a long time. 62. Everything around me was happening so fast that I could no longer follow what was going on. 41. My body seemed to me numb, dead and weird. 38. I felt threatened. 63. I had the feeling something horrible would happen. 29. I was afraid without being able to say exactly why.
19. I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever.
30. I experienced everything terrifyingly distorted.
32. I experienced my surroundings as strange and weird.
53. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own.
5. I felt like a marionette.
33. I felt as though I were paralyzed.
16. I had difficulty making even the smallest decision.
24. I had difficulty in distinguishing important from unimportant things.
44. I felt isolated from everything and everyone.
45. I was not able to complete a thought, my thought repeatedly became disconnected.
Double Dread (DED) (43) effects from APZ and OAV Combined
Everything around me was happening so fast that I could no longer follow what was going on.
Everything around me was happening so fast that I could no longer follow what was really going on.
I experienced an unbearable emptiness.
I experienced everything terrifyingly distorted.
I experienced my surroundings as strange and weird.
I felt a total emptiness in my head.
I felt as though I were paralyzed.
I felt isolated from everything and everyone.
I felt like a marionette.
I felt like a robot.
I felt surrendered to dark powers.
I felt threatened without realizing by what.
I felt threatened.
😱🐉🚪💎🌳🍄🐍🪨🏆😇🍄🚪⚡️🍄
I felt tormented without knowing exactly why.
I felt tormented.
I had difficulty in distinguishing important from unimportant things.
I had difficulty making even the smallest decision.
I had the feeling something horrible would happen.
I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own.
I observed myself as though I were a stranger.
I stayed frozen in a very unnatural position for quite a long time.
I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever.
I was afraid to lose my self-control.
I was afraid without being able to say exactly why.
I was not able to complete a thought, my thought repeatedly became disconnected.
I was not able to complete a thought; my thoughts repeatedly became disconnected.
It seemed to me as though there were an invisible wall between me and my surroundings.
It seemed to me that I no longer have any feelings.
My body seemed to me numb, dead and weird.
My own feelings seemed strange to me as though they did not belong to me.
My surroundings seemed peculiarly strange to me.
My thinking was constantly being interrupted by insignificant thoughts.
To Matthew Johnson, to Add the ‘Control’ Category to the Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ):
Subject: CEQ needs to add a “Control challenges” factor/category, including Question 54 😱
Hi Prof. Johnson,
I enjoyed your article Consciousness, Religion, and Gurus: Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine, and am looking forward to the psychedelic chaplaincy study.
Prof. Jerry Brown (The Psychedelic Gospels) recommended that I forward my recommendations and analysis of the CEQ to you.
The Challenging Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) is dangerous and ineffective. It has a giant vulnerability the size of a shadow dragon monster. Do not use the CEQ as-is.
The ‘Control’ Factor/Category to Add to CEQ
The CEQ needs to add this Control factor (category of psychedelic effects questions):
Control
5D-ASC 54. I was afraid to lose my self-control. 5D-ASC 6. I had the feeling of being connected to a superior power. 5D-ASC 5. I felt like a puppet or marionette. 5D-ASC 53. I had the feeling that I no longer had a will of my own. 5D-ASC 38. I felt threatened. SOCQ 28. Sense of being trapped and helpless. HRS #. It was difficult to control my thoughts.
These items are my top picks from the main questionnaires.
The Shadow Gatekeeper Explained and Reconciled
I have efficiently explained the battle with “the shadow”, in the Egodeath theory, which explains psychedelic eternalism.
Like Bob Jesse, I have an Electrical Engineering degree and am low-key working largely behind the scenes.
As an undergraduate in 1988, I used STEM-type thinking and language usage to create the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence (including loose cognitive binding to experience the block universe and worldlines) to explain usefully what the mystics’ approach is incapable of articulating.
It is crucial and urgent to add this Control category, with these items, to the CEQ. Question 54 is the shadow, and it is the most required question of all, yet CEQ overlooked it, proving that the CEQ needs a reality check and domain expertise.
11-Factors’ Impaired Control and Cognition category has issues too; the ICC factor is malformed without its central, definitive, characteristic Question 54, about fear specifically of control loss.
When people seek the gold treasure of Transcendent Knowledge, in order to pass through the dragon-guarded gate, they must repudiate naive possibilism-thinking and adopt eternalism-thinking (pictured as non-branching or {cut branching}, and {standing on right leg}).
In the popular Middle Ages motif inside of Christianity, branching-message mushroom trees, knowledge of reconciling with the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control was represented as relying on the right leg (and arm) rather than on the left leg.
{standing on right leg} to {defeat the dragon} (“the shadow” that you need to “surrender to”) and thus {get the treasure} and {be made able to pass in and out through the gate}
My original research, partly from writing an article for Prof. Jerry Brown, discovered the motif of branching-message mushroom trees densely in Christian art, and more sparsely in Hellenistic art as well.
This particular breakthrough (branching-message mushroom trees and handedness) was around November 2020, with roots back to October 1985 and panning out until July 2022.
CEQ Doesn’t Cover Negative Effects as Griffiths Claimed to Charles Stang
Other changes needed to the CEQ: Remove some 7 duplicate effects questions copied from multiple questionnaires. The “final” CEQ induces paranoia because it asks the same effect question two or three times.
Charles Stang is right, or more than right: the conception of “mystic experience” from Stace/ Pahnke/ Griffiths is malformed, missing negative experiencing. Griffiths defended his balanced coverage of the non-mystical negative mystical effects, by pointing to the CEQ.
That’s my area of specialty, so I examined the CEQ, only to discover that it omits and discards the main negative effects (loss of control), so the CEQ fails to do what Griffiths claims to Stang that it does.
Charles Stang, a historian of mysticism and theology of mysticism at Harvard, challenged and criticized Griffiths and the MEQ for using a conception of mysticism that fails to match the historical archive of reports from mystics.
Lopsidedly positive mystical experience is typical of newbies. Advanced psychedelic experience is concerned with the control-vortex capabilities of the mind to formally self-transgress personal control, which drives transformation of the mental model of control agency and branching world.
As psilocybin prohibition is repealed, more people will reach the advanced mystical experiences, which are negative, in the course of reaching the treasure of Transcendent Knowledge through transforming the model of personal control and time and branching possibilities.
The CEQ is the repressed, dissociated shadow of the MEQ.
The CEQ itself perpetuates the same problem as Charles Stang pointed out about the MEQ: the CEQ claims to broaden the Dread category, yet (with no explanation), the CEQ deletes 18 of the 21 questions (86%) of the Dread category, which is identical to 11-Factors’ “Unpleasant Experiences” high-level category, containing the same 21 items.
Dread or Unpleasant has not just 13 items (7 ICC + 6 ANX) that need to be added to the Initial Item Pool; there are 8 direct members of the Unpleasant high-level category as well, including the all-important item #54.
By omitting all of the control-challenge effects from the Dread/ Unpleasant category (deleting 18 of 21 items = 86%, keeping 3 of 21 items = 14%), the CEQ utterly fails to engage with the main advanced negative mystic experiencing.
The main, most distinctive and characteristic challenging psychedelics effect is not motivational vertigo (“Grief”), but rather, formal transgression of personal control, producing the advanced peak mystical experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control.
The crisis experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control is the precise naming and identification of “the shadow”, the threatening dragon monster, the gate-guard angel of death blocking the way to the treasure sought, which is Transcendent Knowledge and personal transformation of control agency in world.
Why on Earth does CEQ delete 86% of the Dread items, while claiming to broaden coverage of challenging psychedelic effects?!
The added Grief category does reflect a major effect, but where is the justification to delete 18 of the 21 Dread effects items, and have no Volition-Control challenges category in the CEQ?
Studerus was in error in poor communication that there are two high-level categories: Unpleasant Experiencing (21 items) and Pleasant Experiencing (45 items).
Studerus was in error in first placing the all-important Shadow question, #54, in Anxiety, and then in error in making #54 a direct member of the Unpleasant high-level category.
#54 is specifically fear of loss of control, and therefore it is the main item to define the Impaired Control and Cognition factor.
The factors in 11-Factors’ Unpleasant high-level category need to be constructed around item #54 placed in ICC.
Griffiths’ team was in error in adding only the 13 low-level ICC & ANX factor items to the CEQ’s Initial Item Pool. Griffiths needed to instead add all 21 of 11-Factors’ high-level Unpleasant category’s items to the CEQ’s Initial Item Pool – that would have included the misplaced, all-important Question #54, the shadow question, “I was afraid to lose my self-control.”
Subject line: Critique of Griffiths MEQ30 and other ME questionnaires Jan. 7, 2023
Prof. Jerry Brown on Challenging Experiences and Risks
Hi Michael,
Your recent posts critiquing Griffiths and others for ignoring challenging psychedelic experiences in evaluating mystical experiences brought to mind the following:
1/ The Dark Night of the Soul, Before Revelation (Campbell)
1/ The Dark Night of the Soul – described in mystical and psychological literature, including this quote from Wikipedia by Joseph Campbell: Joseph Campbell states:
“The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.”
2/ Grof’s Basic Perinatal Matrix II. Early on in his work, Grof proposed these matrixes I-IV as a paradigm for the LSD experience.
Basic Perinatal Matrix II (BPM II) is that point in the birth when labor has started and we are being pushed up against the cervix by the mother’s contractions but the cervix has not yet begun to dilate or open.
This can be a very scary experience, and people in later life who were traumatized at this point in their birth may feel claustrophobia, existential angst, depression, feelings of terror, or other negative consequences.
Edgar Allen Poe may have been a BPM II baby as evidenced by his short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” where a character finds himself in a prison where walls are closing in on him and the only way out is down a bottomless pit.
3/ Bob Jesse’s concern in Lucid News Interview: Address Risks & Negative Experiences
01/06/2023 – A Psychedelic Pioneer’s 2023 Forecast http://eepurl.com/ihxulX – Lucid News email newsletter, January 6, 2023. Bob Jesse on risks:
3/ Bob Jesse’s concern, expressed in the Lucid News Interview that we are not addressing or educating about the risks or negative experiences that psychedelics can and do occasion.
KJ at Lucid News wrote:
“Surveying the landscape, Jesse noted that FDA trials for approval of MDMA and psychedelic medicines are progressing along a well-marked track, and should pave the way for insurance coverage for FDA-approved uses.
“So it’s the non-FDA routes we need to watch most carefully,” he [Bob Jesse] emailed. “With ballot and legislative initiatives [e.g., Oregon and Colorado] what expectations are being set?
“Word is getting out about the potential upsides of psychedelic use, but what about the risks?
“Some people don’t respond favorably, and occasionally the outcomes are negative.
“A few will have very bad outcomes.
“Our culture has developed intuitive understandings of activities that carry risks, like riding a bike, driving, and rock climbing.
“They’re usually quite safe — except when they aren’t.
“Western culture doesn’t yet have that kind of understanding, including risks and risk reduction, of psychedelics. We’re in an adolescent stage at most.” [emphasis added by Brown, on Jesse’s statements]
Reasons for Positive Framing of Mystic-State Experience
IMHO this approach by Griffiths and other leading researchers may be due to trying to position psychedelics positively to successfully navigate the media and political landscape surrounding the Psychedelic Renaissance and current research.
Regards, Jerry [January 7, 2023]
Reply to Brown about Risks Acknowledgement
People are underestimating the nature of the risk.
The peak risk is the central name of the game, the {dragon shadow threat} is what entheogens are ultimately all about.
The risk is not an incidental side effect, to steer away from; the risk is the main central gate to steer toward and master and navigate through.
To position psychedelics positively to successfully navigate the media and political landscape surrounding the Psychedelic Renaissance and current research, the field needs to recognize & comprehend that the {shadow dragon monster} threat is the threat to self-control stability during control-model transformation during switching from possibilism to eternalism in the eternalism altered state.
The eternalism explanation of the entheogenic altered state is an extremely small, specific, and simple explanatory model that fits with:
* The reported effects & risks.
* The reported folk solutions to the peak risk (“surrender, submit, accept your lack of control”).
* The transformation that’s the whole point of the game: gaining Transcendent Knowledge, gnosis, perfection, completion, the adult developmental form.
Fallacy: “Activity X has a risk, therefore disallow that activity.” Every activity has risks, yet we consider the balance of risks and benefits.
“We’re in an adolescent stage”
That is the stage of initiation and rites of passage from youth (or maiden) form to adult form.
Comprehend the dragon shadow threat, reconcile, stop thinking as a child, put away childish things, learn to stand on right leg instead of left leg.
Convert from possibilism-thinking to eternalism-thinking and sacrifice and jettison childish thinking to pass through the dragon-guarded gate to get the treasure, Transcendent Knowledge, the adult form which is compatible with the altered state
— unlike the childish, immature form of thinking – the childish conception of control agency in a branching world, creating one’s future in an open future.
That child dies in some sense, repudiated as non-viable in the altered state, in the course of the mind’s standard maturation/ initiation process.
* Forgotten, but not any more: The treasure, gnosis, Transcendent Knowledge, guarded by the threatening dragon monster shadow.
I noticed today that Jordan Peterson gets it right, during his interview of Griffiths:
“That’s specifically why you’re encouraged in mythological stories to confront the dragon and get the gold, that’s the basic story“
We don’t merely experience a random threat or risk as an isolated thing.
The threat is the main challenge for completing the game, the objective is to get the treasure, be able to pass in & out through the gate like God’s holy city and garden at the end of the Bible to access freely the sacrament of the non-dying.
The “isolated random risk” (the shadow) is actually specific and central.
We must go through the threat, the risk – the {shadow/ dragon/ monster} is the entire gateway and center of the whole pursuit: the dragon risk comes together with pursuit of the treasure of gnosis, Transcendent Knowledge, transformation.
Pursuing the {treasure} and successfully engaging & reconciling with the specific risk (the {shadow/ dragon}) produces a transformed acclimation of the constitution of the psyche, to become able to endure the altered state, and become re-naturalized as a member of the altered state realm.
Dark Night of the Soul per Joseph Campbell
Thanks, I wanted to check the definition of “dark night of the soul” which Charles Stang mentioned, to see if that concept covers the issue of reconciling with the {dragon/ shadow} of threat of non-control. Likely Griffiths & Stang & I have divergent conceptions of a dark night.
I accidentally bought a 2nd copy of Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces – not bad.
Nice that I document my breakthrough work Thanksgiving 2013 – OH NO a photo of Thousand Faces, means I got a 2nd copy of it (again). It was a 4-Campbell breakthrough. Open: The Power of Myth, Illustrated Edition.
My first copy was with me in my Thanksgiving 2013 “tree vs. snake” breakthrough – but I don’t think I had looked at that book yet, only looked at pictures in The Power of Myth – Illustrated Version, the power which I experienced for weeks after that shaking confirmation of my couple years of speculation about {branching} vs. {non-branching} in mythemes.
Campbell, Power of Myth, a top-3-ever major breakthrough: got full confirmation of {branching} as a key mytheme. Didn’t register though yet that holding branch with left hand = possibilism-thinking.Non-branching tree; figured key formula: {tree vs. snake} = possibilism vs. eternalism by studying Hellenistic & Christian art in parallel, Nov. 2013 breakthrough
Still, in 2013 into 2014, I yet lacked articulate comprehension of:
{handedness} – I solved and explained this Christmas 2015. Relying on right leg/ right hand, not left leg/ left hand. left vs. right = possibilism (left, branching, bad, unstable) vs. eternalism (right, non-branching, good, stable). Where Possibilism and Eternalism are not just models of time, but of control and possibilities branching too.
{cut branches} – I solved and explained this Thanksgiving 2020. Asserts eternalism rather than possibilism.
{branching-message mushroom trees} – I solved and explained this March-July 2022.. Your youth with knife cutting branch on tower.
None of that is in Campbell. Campbell doesn’t explain {handedness} and {cut branches} and {branching-message mushroom trees}, which the Egodeath theory (the theory of psychedelic eternalism) has accomplished.
Photo Credit: Julie M. Brown. Crop, image processing, & mytheme decoding by Cybermonk, March 2022. Hold branch w/ left hand (possibilism-thinking), cut branch w/ right hand (eternalism-thinking).
Martin Arnold’s 2018 book The Dragon: Fear & Power claims that we can’t figure out what the dragon means, and the book reduces the {dragon} to the Social domain, reductionistically, not at all recognizing the dragon as an altered-state-specific denizen.
It was so hard to figure out handedness and branching-message mushroom trees, that good mushroom art was in my 2006 main article, and I only recognized the message of handedness & non-branching in 2022, 16 years later.
Now I’m extra happy with the dumb luck that my main article has absolutely profound branching and handedness messaging in the first and last illustrations, even if the text didn’t yet comprehend that, but just has my “here be dragons” un-completed effort to explain in 2006 Moses’ {healing rigid snake on a pole} — or on a {tree with cut branches}.
Dumb luck – but no coincidence actually, that where there is Psilocybin in art, there is profound representation of eternalism as non-branching, per my next great mytheme equation:
{branching vs. non-branching} = possibilism vs. eternalism
Much awesomer than realized during 2006-2021Took WAY too long to decode {holding branch w/ left hand}
This is a strange coincidence, I was going to reply with URLs for a pair of articles from lucid.news, and I see that your thread already has lucid.news content.
Your Jesse article in Lucid newsletter mentions the report I’m looking for: KJ quotes Bob Jesse:
“Jesse is also looking forward to the release of another much anticipated report: “This year will see publication of a controlled study conducted at Johns Hopkins and NYU, in which religious leaders of various traditions were given high-dose psilocybin sessions and asked to report their experiences through the lens of their tradition.”
CEQ Deletes the Main Negative Psychedelic Effects – Part 1
You [Brown] wrote:
“trying to position psychedelics positively to successfully navigate the media and political landscape surrounding the Psychedelic Renaissance and current research.”
Charles Stang inquired about coverage of negative mystical experiences, and so Griffiths said his Challenging Experiences Questionnaire (CEQ) is supposed to cover negative/ challenging/ risks — but CEQ fails, in its “final” version.
CEQ’s Initial Item Pool was not too bad, though that pool already overlooked the 8 (of 21) Dread questions which didn’t make the cut for the final version of 11-Factors’ Anxiety factor, or the Impaired Control and Cognition factor, of Studerus’ 11-Factors version of OAV.
One of those 8 questions (#54: “I was afraid to lose my self-control”) was key, and was initially in 11-Factors’ Anxiety factor/category — that’s how close Griffiths came to adding that important item to the Initial Item Pool – but it’s still likely Griffiths would have removed such good Control-challenge effects questions from the “final” CEQ.
The CEQ argues that we must protect client safety and protect continued research, by better accounting for the full range of challenging experiences, unlike the 21-question Dread category of the Dittrich questionnaire series:
APZ (22 Angst/Dread effects items)
OAV (21 Angst/Dread effects items)
5D-ASC (21 Angst/Dread effects items)
11-Factors replaces the OAV 1994 high-level dimensions/categories (O, A, & V).
11-Factors also adds 11 low-level factors/categories (practically 13)).
11-Factors adds the low-level factors/categories, 11 of them, and 2 phantom virtual factors or remnant factors begging to be overlooked.
The remnant factors/categories are:
Unpleasant Experiences (8 non-factor items vs. 13 factor members) – effects questions that are members of the high-level Unpleasant factor, but not of any low-level factor/category. “Factor 12”
Pleasant Experiences (16 non-factor items vs. many factor members) – effects questions that are members of the high-level Pleasant factor, but not of any low-level factor/category. “Factor 13”
11-Factors has a 21-item Unpleasant Experiences high-level category, which exactly matches the 21-item Angst/Dread dimension/category of OAV 1994 & of 5D-ASC.
The CEQ first gathers most (13 of 21) of the negative effects questions from OAV’s ‘Angst/Dread‘ category when picking 64 items from the 3 main questionnaires to form the Initial Item Pool.
But then CEQ recklessly discards most of the negative effects during a project of highlighting the favored new category of “Grief”, ignoring Control issues, to produce the “final” set of CEQ items (discarding Dread, adding Grief to replace – not augment! – Dread).
Instead of adding coverage of risks, Griffiths deleted(!) 18(!) of 21 effects questions (86%) from Angst/Dread.
This wild, uncontrolled bulk deletion of challenging effects questions increases risk, while claiming to decrease risk.
There’s no discussion about removing items, just vague broad math that obscures the “judgment” process that’s mentioned in the CEQ article:
“Twenty-seven items (spanning all six scales of the HRS) that were judged by the authors to assess a potentially challenging aspect of experience with classic hallucinogens were retained for the initial item pool for the CEQ.” – CEQ article Griffiths 2016 p. 4.
CEQ Deletes the Main Negative Psychedelic Effects – Part 2
Did Griffiths pick any of HRS’s Volition sub-scale items for CEQ’s Initial Item Pool? If so, that would contradict their statement on p. 2 that Volition effects are not expected and judged/hypothesized to be challenging:
“Of the six sub-scales of the HRS (i.e. affect, cognition, intensity, perception, somaesthesia, and volition), one might hypothesize that the affect, cognition, and somaesthesia subscales might be most sensitive to challenging experiences [unlike intensity, perception, and volition].”
The HRS, including showing each item in each category, is unobtainable. So I can’t answer whether Griffiths picked any of HRS’s Volition items for the CEQ Initial Item Pool.
The resulting CEQ is Griffiths’ “Science” done in the dark, under the occluding cover of misapplied math.
The 3 main questionnaires are:
SOCQ/MEQ43/MEQ30
HRS (Strassman)
APZ 1975
APZ with OAVG [1985]
OAV [1994] & BETA [1994?]
5D-ASC [2000 & 2006]
11-Factors [2010].
The CEQ article confusingly says “5D-ASC” (with typos actually) but in fact pulls from 11-Factors.
The CEQ Initial Item Pool is 64 questions from those 3 questionnaires. It ought to have been 8 more; 72.
The questions pulled in from 11-Factors is confused: Griffiths was supposed to pick the entire set of 21 Unpleasant Experiences items, but they only picked the subset of 13 of those items that are members of Anxiety (ANX) low-level factor or Impaired Control and Cognition (ICC) low-level factor.
Griffiths mistakenly ignored the 8 effects items that in 11-Factors ended up as direct members of the high-level category, Unpleasant Experiences.
Griffiths 2016 (CEQ) made the mistake because Studerus 2010 didn’t communicate well, that 11-Factors has two levels of categories, not just high-level O/A/V categories:
High-level categories of 11-Factors: 11-Factors conjoins O(ceanic) & V(isionary) to produce 45 Pleasant Experiences. “Unpleasant” is identical with OAV’s Angst/Dread (the same 21 effects items/questions). 45 + 21 = 66, identical with OAV’s 66 total items.
Low-level categories of 11-Factors: Omits 24 items of OAV’s 66, at this level; 66-24=42 items are in the 11 low-level factors/categories. Omits Unpleasant (8) & Pleasant (16) items that are members of high-level but not of any low-level factor/category.
Psychedelic Effects Question #54 😱
#54. I was afraid to lose my self-control.
😱🐉🚪💎🌳🍄🐍🏆😇🍄🚪⚡️🍄
In Studerus 2010 Figure S1 vs. S2 – watch how items / questions / effects move – Psychedelic Effects Question #54 😱🐉🚪💎🌳🍄🐍🏆😇🍄 moves out of Anxiety factor at some point, after Figure S2.
How Question #54 Eventually Moves Out from 11-Factors’ Anxiety Factor to Become a Direct Member of “Unpleasant” High-Level Category
These diagrams were added later.
In the first, Figure S1 tree hierarchy, the Anxiety factor (blue box) includes question #54: “I was afraid to lose my self-control”:
Studerus 2010 Figure S1, Unpleasant Experiences high-level category: Direct Unpleasant members items: 4 Anxiety factor items (blue box): 8 Impaired Control and Cognition factor items (green box): 9 Total: 21
In the second, Figure S2 tree hierarchy, the Anxiety factor continues to include question #54, and #12: “I felt tormented” is now a direct member of Unpleasant, removed from the Anxiety factor:
Studerus 2010 Figure S2, Unpleasant Experiences high-level category: Direct Unpleasant members items: 6 Anxiety factor items (blue box): 7 Impaired Control and Cognition factor items (green box): 8 Total: 21
In the final version of the factor categories, Figure 1 in the article p. 9, the Anxiety factor (bottom group) no longer includes #54, “I was afraid to lose my self-control”, between items #19 & #30:
Studerus 2010 Figure 1, page 9, final items in ICC & ANX factors, from the Unpleasant Experiences high-level category: Direct Unpleasant members items: 8 (not shown!) Anxiety factor items (bottom group): 6 Impaired Control and Cognition factor items (top group): 7 Total: 13 (8 Unpleasant items not represented)
CEQ Deletes the Main Negative Psychedelic Effects – Part 3
That’s how Griffiths failed to include the most important question, the main question I track that got disastrously overlooked: #54: “I was afraid to lose my self-control.”
Griffith’s psychometrics math is bad and not legit, evidenced by the lack of item #54 and similar items about Control challenges.
As the CEQ article argues, when risks aren’t accounted for, it is risky (for psychonauts & for researchers, to keep research permitted).
The CEQ, in its “final” version, increases risk compared to OAV’s Angst/Dread categories of 21 effects items/questions, since discards 18 Dread items and only retains 3 of those items, and not the most challenging items, such as #54.
CEQ can be somewhat repaired by adding my Control factor/category containing 7 items (deliberately 1 bigger than Griffiths’ pet new Grief category), but the ~7 dup questions probably need to be removed – it’s paranoia-inducing being asked the same effect question in 2 or 3 slightly different ways because dup’d across the source questionnaires.
The CEQ needs a reality check and a re-do, and an actual discussion of the content of every negative question that they omit from the resulting questionnaire.
Naturally, the people who made a lopsidedly positive MEQ are unable to make an actual CEQ. It’s the same team repeating the same kind of mistake. As if they are able to correct their habitual error of blind spots.
So I made my specialized Eternalism and Control Questionnaire (ECQ), to correctly supplement the CEQ which attempts and fails to band-aid the MEQ.
The CEQ is the repressed, dissociated shadow of the MEQ.
The “final” CEQ in effect discards the Dread questions – it retains 3 weak questions of OAV’s 21 Dread effects questions:
* CEQ keeps the Isolation question, to pad-out Griffiths’ Isolation pseudo-category (= 3 dup effects questions from the 3 main questionnaires). “I felt isolated from everything and everyone.”
* CEQ keeps a generic, vague Fear category question (I’ve got a bad feeling about this), “I had the feeling something horrible would happen.”
* CEQ keeps the “last forever” question to put in their Insanity category. “I was afraid that the state I was in would last forever.”
The important Control issues that the final CEQ fails to cover includes the main challenging experience, the experience of the threat of catastrophic loss of control – the terrifying {dragon monster} experience demanding surrender – and demanding sacrifice of the claim to autonomous egoic control agency in a branching world.
So I listed my 7 top recommended questionnaire items that need to be added in a Control factor (category) in the CEQ.
But even with my correction, the CEQ seems like a non-serious mockup/sketch, not a usable questionnaire.
CEQ is the repressed shadow of the MEQ (Mystical Experience Questionnaire).
CEQ Deletes the Main Negative Psychedelic Effects – Part 4
I hope people find some value in my questionnaire research, it was hard to find summary information. The claim to build a Science-based foundation seems to boil down to these psychometrics questionnaires, which are not beyond critique.
The CEQ (Challenging Experiences Questionnaire) is intended to address some objections. But CEQ is itself half-baked in its final result that doesn’t even seem usable, with 7 dup questions about the same effect from different questionnaires padding out the hit-or-miss categories.
At the moment, I’m searching to see if Griffiths yet published the 2015-started research, I don’t think it’s about Meditation, I think it’s about Psychedelic Chaplaincy, that he was mentioning on Jordan Peterson’s YouTube channel not long ago, May 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGIP-3Q-p_s&t=2635s but Griffiths has a pact to not talk about the results until the study is published.
Griffiths has been getting a lot of pushback. From Jordan Peterson, from Charles Stang, and I’ve found others.
That first Lucid article tells of a rabbi breaking away from, or moving through Griffiths’ experiments and then breaking away into a direction that’s not the brand of religion that’s baked into Griffiths’ model. The rabbi started the Jewish group Shefa: https://www.shefaflow.org/about-shefa
I even detect possible hints of Griffiths’ research partner Matthew Johnson wanting to break out of the Griffiths conception of religion or spirituality.
An earlier major article by Roland Griffiths & Matthew Johnson has photos of a Buddha statue in the clinic couch room (the last page):
Guidelines for Safety article, Figure 1: “The living room-like session room used in the Johns Hopkins hallucinogen research studies. …”
… and then more recently (2021 – 2008 = 13 years later), Johnson wrote the article Consciousness, Religion, and Gurus, the “lose the New Age symbolism” article discussed on Charles Stang’s Harvard series of webinars, Psychedelics and the Future of Religion (academic year 2020-2021, now folded into the newer “Transcendence and Transformation” initiative at Harvard Divinity School.
Jesse – “a key role for the media to play in educating about the full range of possible outcomes and contextualizing the negative ones.”
That comes down to recognizing the {shadow/ dragon} as threat of loss of control during pursuing Transcendent Knowledge and transformation to the adult form, while switching from possibilism-thinking to eternalism-thinking, in the eternalism state of consciousness.
The eternalism experiential mode, which eventually produces the eternalism mental world model of time, control, and possibilities.
Bricklin: Enlightenment = Eternalism
Bricklin’s book The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James’s Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment (SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology), equates “enlightenment” with eternalism.
That book is part of Consciousness Studies, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, & Journal of Consciousness Studies, and was reviewed in draft by Benny Shanon & Ramesh Balsekar.
Balsekar asserted no-free-will as enlightenment, among the Ken Wilber Integral Theory crowd.
Such books by Sam Harris, Balsekar, Shanon, Campbell, and Bricklin don’t bring the ideas together tightly and simply, as the Egodeath theory does.
The risk is the {shadow/ dragon}, is the threat of transgressive control instability during the transition from possibilism to eternalism – as a state, followed by producing a mental world model.
The state transition to the eternalism experiential mode transforms both egoic steering/controller thinking, and the branching-possibilities world in which steering and creating one’s future happens, or (normally) feels like it’s happening (according to the possibilism experiential mode, which is the ordinary state).
Reckon with This: Canterbury Mushroom Psalter
Jesse: “the historical and scientific evidence is overwhelming that entheogens, used appropriately, often occasion experiences that people describe as profoundly ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ (both of these terms are hard to pin down). Government and the culture will need to reckon with that“
The evidence is common because the source of religious experiencing is entheogens, as evidenced by branching-message mushroom trees and other mushroom imagery within the heart of Christian history — not only “early Christianity”, but Middle Ages, explicitly (not “hidden” or “secret”; not foreign or alien), inside the mainstream cathedrals and chapels and illuminated manuscripts
— as with my full uncovering of all 75 of the mushroom plants, with essential interpretation, in the Great Mushroom Psalter by Eadwine, November 2020 – March 2022.
The Egodeath theory 