Evidence from anthropology and archaelogy indicate that the use of these substances as means of contacting other dimensions of existence and experiencing the sacred or divine has been widespread in human cultures almost everywhere on the planet.
Ever since the famous Good-Friday experiment by Walter Pahnke in Harvad, during his doctoral thesis in the 1960s, this has become a hot-topic in the fields of psychology and neuroscience of mystical experiences.
For this research we have translated Pahnke’s Mystical Experience Questionnaire, we are statistically validating its psychometric properties and applying it to the study of mystical experiences with the use of psychedelics, or entheogens1, in Brazil.
Having more than 1500 online respondents, we are assessing the influence of substance and the set & setting in shaping the experiences people have under the effects of these substances when used as sacramental tools.
Brazil being a highly spiritualized country, abound in diversity and syncretism, we are in a privileged position to develop this line of research.
Participants (N=1532) completed the 43-item MEQ in reference to a mystical or profound experience they had had after ingesting psychedelic substances (ayahuasca, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, MDMA).
Open for funding (donations will fund the assessment of the results).
The claim has been made that the experience facilitated by psychedelic drugs, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, can be similar or identical to the experience described by the mystics of all ages, cultures, and religions.
Some of the researchers who have experimented with synthesized mescaline, LSD, or psilocybin have remarked upon the similarity between drug-induced and spontaneous mystical experiences because of the frequency with which some of their subjects have used mystical and religious language to describe their experiences.
These data interested the author in a careful examination and evaluation of such claims. An empirical study, designed to investigate in a systematic and scientific way the similarities and differences between experiences described by mystics and those facilitated by psychedelic drugs, was undertaken (Pahnke, 1966, 1967).
Excerpt from “Drugs and Mysticism” by Walter N. Pahnke, The International Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. VIII, No. 2, Spring 1966, pp. 295-313. Read the entire paper here.
Doblin, R. (1991). Pahnke’s “Good Friday Experiment”: A Long-Term Follow-Up and Methodological Critique. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology Vol 23 (No. 1) 1991.
Maclean, K. A., Leoutsakos, J.-M. S., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2012). Factor Analysis of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: A Study of Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 51(4), 721–737.
Griffiths, R. R., Richards, W. A., Johnson, M. W., McCann, U. D., & Jesse, R. (2008). Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later, Journal of Psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 22(6), 621–632.
Trichter, Stephen M. Changes in Spirituality Among Ayahuasca Ceremony Novice Participants. (doctoral dissertation) Argosy University/San Francisco Bay Area, 2006.
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