In the 2017 article Of Roots and Fruits: A Comparison of Psychedelic and Nonpsychedelic Mystical Experiences, David Bryce Yaden et al. concluded that mystical experiences induced with psychedelic substances are genuinely mystical. Their paper stated:
Experiences of profound existential or spiritual significance can be triggered reliably through psychopharmacological means using psychedelic substances. However, little is known about the benefits of religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences (RSMEs) prompted by psychedelic substances, as compared with those that occur through other means.
The first problem with this assertion is that the authors do not make the difference between the feeling tone and the content of the mystical experiences. Consequently, they have not really studied mystical experiences, they have studied the overall feeling of an experience they called mystical.
The feeling tone and the experience are two different things. It is as if, studying the feeling of fear, some scientists would not differentiate the fear from encountering a real danger and the fear produced by an horror movie. Both are fears but one is false, empty and not a response to a real threat. When facing a real danger, the experiencer will either fight or flight which are the normal responses to danger. In front of an horror movie, the experiencer will stay on his seat enjoying the feeling of fear he knows is fake. The same distinction must be done with mystical experiences. Some are real, the nonpsychedelic ones and some are empty, the psychedelic ones. What is triggered by the psychedelic substances is not a mystical experience but the feeling that accompanies it. The psychedelic is akin to the horror movie producing a fear that is false.
The second problem is linked to the impacts and benefits of the mystical experiences the authors of the article have studied. Yaden et al. conclude that the psychedelic induced mystical experiences were rated as more mystical, resulted in a reduced fear of death, provided a sense of purpose and increased spirituality. Here again, the authors have compared the output of two different things: an experience under a modified state of consciousness and an experience lived with full consciousness. Let's take again our example above of the study of fear. Which one would be more fully experienced? The fear from a real danger or the fear from an horror movie? Certainly the fear from an horror movie because the viewer baths in his fear, stays in it longer. He who is confronted to a real danger does not experience fully his fear because he will automatically switch into fight or flight mode to save his life. Therefore, the benefits and impacts of the fear from an horror movie will be greater because longer undergone. This is exactly what Yaden has found: artificially induced experiences have more impact because the feeling tone is more profound and last longer under an altered consciousness. That does not mean the artificial experience is better.
The third problem concerns the cause and origin of the mystical experience. As a worldwide and historical phenomenon, mystical experience must be seen as a normal yet rare psychological experience that is triggered by a particular process. C. G. Jung was the psychologist who studied the most the nonpsychedelic mystical experiences because he linked them to his individuation process. The authors of the article should have relied more on his writings instead of referring to William James. According to Jung, these experiences always have a symbol of conjunction of opposites at their core, a quality that the psychedelic experience does not bear. Let's see two examples from IMERE.
Nonpsychedelic Mystical Experience: Male, 18 y. o.
I had the intense feeling of being one with everything. A total dissolution of all boundaries, shape, direction. A feeling of submersion and flow in all conceivable directions at the same time. Total peace and completeness, but not conscious of self at all. There was no me, everything was me and I was everything.
Waking up was terrible at first. Realising I was in a room with so many things that were separate from me, that I couldn’t feel, that weren’t me. It took me a while to adjust and appreciate the profound experience I just had. I had been an atheist/agnostic until then, but have been very spiritual since, as I think I was (with) God during this experience.
I keep saying that I don’t just believe in God – I have experienced God and therefore know that there is God (or whatever name you want to give this holistic oneness, not tied to any one religion for me; Christianity just afforded me some approximate vocabulary).¹
Here, the conjunction of opposites me-universe or particle-whole is evident. The experiencer feels as being one with everything, he has become the whole for a short moment. As always, we must distinguish what is the experience and what is the interpretation. In the quote above, the experience is the symbol of conjunction of the opposites me-world. The interpretation is the association made by the experiencer of that symbol to God. We must underline that the interpretation is not the experience.
Psychedelic Mystical Experience: Male 22 y. o. on 5 gr. mushroom
Once the trip started there were many segments or vignettes, most of which cannot be encapsulated by words. The initial most memorable segment was when I turned into a vibration (colour) and shot out of my body straight up and quickly left the earth.Space was a thick soup of all of the questions and answers of the universe, but I couldn’t make them out as I was moving too quickly. I continued to gain speed as I left the solar system moving towards the edges of the universe. Once I reached the edge of the universe I split in half and started to move around the edges of the universe at increasing speed.Eventually, my vibration encompassed the entire edge of the universe and came together causing an explosion. The explosion pushed me into another realm where I saw a giant pool of all of the vibrations of everything that has and ever will live, where all life begins and ends, like a giant pool, that felt deeply like home. It was like I was being shown this by something/someone that knew me more intimately than anyone, and then I realized I was in the presence of God.²
Here, we find no symbol of conjunction of opposites. There are many images but none which could be defined as a lived symbol of conjunction of opposites. The feeling tone of that experience might be the same as the previous one, but those experiences are not identical. When scientists compare nonpsychedelic to psychedelic experiences, they are comparing birds with planes. Both flies but they have very little in common.
What Jung has found in his extensive research is that mystical experiences are part of a process which comprises three successive occurrences. Evelyn Underhill has reached the same conclusion in her 1911 book Mysticism. Other mystics such as Meister Eckhart, Marguerite Porete and John of the Cross have also determined that three experiences were encountered on that path. If mystical experiences are the output of a normal but rare psychological process, we cannot see how it could be useful to byass that process.
If a psychedelic mystical experience is produced without the normal underlying psychological processes that usually creates those experiences, it is by no means equivalent or superior to the real experience. Again, we should ask ourselves a simple question: is the horror movie induced fear equivalent to the one happening in front of a real danger? No! If one gives all the responses of an exam to a student, does his perfect score represents the same thing as if he had studied during a whole year? No! The underlying processes of learning have been evaded and the power of all the minute realizations during the long study have not enriched the student's mind. The psychedelic mystical experience has very little to do with the nonpsychedelic one apart from the feeling tone.
Jung linked mystical experiences or conjunctions of opposites to an increase in consciousness. As early as 1921 in his book Psychological Types, he explored the possibility that those experiences could derived from the development of a new cognitive function. We know from Jung and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that humans develop only two cognitive functions. Jung was of the opinion that the differentiation of a third and a fourth cognitive function were the underlying factors of mystical experiences. This is certainly a direction that would require more research.
At the end of his article, Yaden states
The results of the preset study, however, suggest that psychedelic experiences can equal or even surpass the intensity and impact of experiences derived through nonpsychedelic means.
This is a false statement that relies on erroneous premises. Sadly, it looks more like a glorification of psychedelics than a scientific understanding of mystical experiences. One cannot get to that conclusion when he has only compared the feeling tone of the psychedelic and the nonpsychedelic mystical experience as it is the case in their article. The evaluation of the intensity and the impact relies on the subjective appreciation by the participants of two different peak experiences. That very fact would certainly put one over the other. In addition, the impact was only measured on how the experience has influenced the participants in the six domains of family, reduced fear of death, health, sense of purpose, religiousness, and spirituality. What about consciousness, view and perspective on life, personal achievement as a human, increase in awareness capabilities, evaluation of life situations, problem-solving skills, and many other observations resulting from the increase of consciousness? Those domains were never considered relevant because the premise of the research was religious.
Yaden's research responds to the paradigm that mystical experiences are a religious phenomenon, hence his evaluation on spirituality, fear of death, religiousness and sense of purpose. But again, interpretation of the experience is not the experience. Mystical experiences are a symbol produced by the mind in response to a normal but rare psychological process. If some scientists could reach an unbiased view of the phenomenon, they would find that mystical experiences have nothing to do with a divine intervention. This would completely change the course of their research.
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¹https://imere.org/experience_story/everything-was-me-and-i-was-everything-2022/
²https://imere.org/experience_story/more-real-than-anything/