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'Nearly all of the participants in the new study considered themselves spiritually active (participating regularly in religious services, prayer or meditation).

by lusr 15y ago

'Nearly all of the participants in the new study considered themselves spiritually active (participating regularly in religious services, prayer or meditation).' ... 'In the study, the change occurred specifically in those volunteers who had undergone a "mystical experience,"... He defines "mystical experience" as among other things, "a sense of interconnectedness with all people and things accompanied by a sense of sacredness and reverence."' So they took a bunch of people prone to mystical experiences and found when you give them hallucinogenics that they have further mystical experiences?

Alex3917 15y ago
"So they took a bunch of people prone to mystical experiences and found when you give them hallucinogenics that they have further mystical experiences?" The people they recruit aren't really much more prone to mystical experiences than anyone else, they're just trying to find volunteers who are psychologically stable and have a support network in case things go poorly.
- lusr 15y ago
  How did you infer this?
  - Alex3917 15y ago
    There's only 20 or so people in the field, and they all help each other to get their studies approved. I think that Rick Strassman is the one who came up with this idea, and he writes about it a bit in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Then all the other investigators started doing this as well. Roland Griffiths may have also talked about this in one of his talks, I forget.
Tsagadai 15y ago
It is pretty common to read or hear about spiritual, religious or mystical experiences even from ardent atheists under hallucinogens. That evidence raises a very interesting philosophical question.
- lusr 15y ago
  It is common to you. But who are you? And therein lies the rub. Anecdotal evidence isn't useful when it comes to research like this: I feel that the experimental design is flawed by not balancing out this very significant variable to be representative of the population at large (estimates vary, but the non-religious make up from 2-20% of the population depending who you ask and how you define the question). My experience is that a significant portion of people in the world do not identify themselves as spiritually active and that people these people do not have such "mystical experiences", whether exposed to hallucinogenics or not.
  - dreamdu5t 15y ago
    Experiments with psychedelics are not really possible because psychedelics present the intellectual paradox: Experiments are based on observational evidence and psychedelics change the nature of observation itself. The only thing you can do is questionnaires like the topic study.

by lusr 15y ago

Alex3917 15y ago

"So they took a bunch of people prone to mystical experiences and found when you give them hallucinogenics that they have further mystical experiences?" The people they recruit aren't really much more prone to mystical experiences than anyone else, they're just trying to find volunteers who are psychologically stable and have a support network in case things go poorly.

lusr 15y ago
How did you infer this?
- Alex3917 15y ago
  There's only 20 or so people in the field, and they all help each other to get their studies approved. I think that Rick Strassman is the one who came up with this idea, and he writes about it a bit in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Then all the other investigators started doing this as well. Roland Griffiths may have also talked about this in one of his talks, I forget.

Tsagadai 15y ago

It is pretty common to read or hear about spiritual, religious or mystical experiences even from ardent atheists under hallucinogens. That evidence raises a very interesting philosophical question.

lusr 15y ago
It is common to you. But who are you? And therein lies the rub. Anecdotal evidence isn't useful when it comes to research like this: I feel that the experimental design is flawed by not balancing out this very significant variable to be representative of the population at large (estimates vary, but the non-religious make up from 2-20% of the population depending who you ask and how you define the question). My experience is that a significant portion of people in the world do not identify themselves as spiritually active and that people these people do not have such "mystical experiences", whether exposed to hallucinogenics or not.
- dreamdu5t 15y ago
  Experiments with psychedelics are not really possible because psychedelics present the intellectual paradox: Experiments are based on observational evidence and psychedelics change the nature of observation itself. The only thing you can do is questionnaires like the topic study.