The sense of oneness with the universe around you, ego transcendence, feeling that this other reality is more real than your waking reality.
It’s certainly the best, most replicated thing in science that if you have the mystical experience during the psychedelic experience, you’re likely to benefit down the road weeks and weeks later—less depression, less anxiety. But it’s not the only thing. I think there’s another domain that is often attached to the mystical experience but is also clearly separable. That’s been called emotional breakthrough, which is closely related to something that you might call psychological insight. These are experiences that have more to do with the life story of the person. A number of studies have shown that if a person faces difficult personal challenges during a psychedelic experience, ones they usually try to push aside, that also pretty strongly predicts antidepressant response. Let’s say I’m overwhelmed with horror that I’m dying of cancer, but I realize that I need to accept it. So this is psychedelics as a year of psychotherapy in a day.
Psyhcedelic experience has to be a difficult experience?
No, it comes at the end of suffering. So one of the dangers of psychedelics is that they can encourage something that’s been called spiritual bypass, which basically means that instead of dealing with primitive behaviors that are causing trouble in your life, you just go into the spiritual realm. You transcend them. You see this when psychedelics go bad, what they often seem to produce are very narcissistic people. These are people wandering around talking about spirituality. Then you watch how they’re living their lives and there’s no evidence they have met any sort of God. So that’s why I trust the spirituality of descent, down into the roots of suffering.
You can’t just have a blissful experience and have the emotional breakthrough.