spirituality and psychedelics research

[entheogenic-gnosis]

The heffter research institute is participating in many on going research programs which involve spirituality and the psychedelic experience, their website outlines currant research in this area:

THE HEFFTER RESEARCH INSTITUTE
The Heffter Research Institute was incorporated in New Mexico in 1993 as a non-profit, 501(c)(3) scientific organization. Since its inception, Heffter has been helping to design, review, and fund the leading studies on psilocybin at prominent research institutions in the US and Europe. Our research has explored psilocybin for the treatment of cancer-related distress and addiction, for understanding the relationship between the psychedelic experience and spirituality, and for basic science research into the physiology of brain activity, cognition, and behavior. The Heffter Institute believes that psychedelics have great, unexplored potential that requires independently funded scientific research to find their best uses in medical treatment. Heffter Research Institute | Advancing Psilocybin Research

Below some on going research is outlined, the research below is focused particularly on Psychedelics and spirituality with a focus on psilocybin. ( there is also research in many other areas related to psychedelics being conducted)

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University are seeking individuals with a regular, long-term meditation practice to participate in a research study looking at the combined effects of meditation and psilocybin, a psychoactive substance found in sacramental mushrooms of some cultures. Volunteers must be between the ages of 25 and 80, have no personal or familial history of severe psychiatric illness, or recent history of alcoholism or drug abuse.

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www.hopkinsmeditation.com

Heffter Research Institute | Spirituality

Heffter Research Institute psilocybin studies reveal the potential for reducing psychological distress. Psilocybin may also contribute to spiritual practices and improving overall wellbeing.

heffter.org

Funded by the Council on Spiritual Practices, this study is currently recruiting practicing religious leaders for an investigation into the effects of psilocybin and the mystical experience. We hypothesize that religious professionals, given their interests, training, and life experience, will be able to make nuanced discriminations of their psilocybin experiences, thus contributing to the scientific understanding of mystical-type experience and its effect on personal wellbeing, spirituality, and prosocial behavior.

Religious Leader Study

Religious Leaders needed to help with research in Baltimore or New York

csp.org

ClinicalTrials.gov

www.clinicaltrials.gov

Heffter Research Institute | Spirituality

Heffter Research Institute psilocybin studies reveal the potential for reducing psychological distress. Psilocybin may also contribute to spiritual practices and improving overall wellbeing.

heffter.org

With initial data published in 2006 and a 14-month follow-up study funded by Heffter and published in 2008 this double-blind study evaluated the psychological effects of a single high dose of psilocybin in 36 hallucinogen-naïve adults who reported regular participation in religious or spiritual activities. In the 14-month follow-up, 58% of volunteers rated the psilocybin-occasioned experience as being among the five most personally meaningful, and 67% reported it to be among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives. Further, 64% indicated that the experience increased well-being or life satisfaction; 58% met criteria for having had a ‘complete’ mystical experience. This study concluded that when administered under supportive conditions, psilocybin occasioned experiences are similar to spontaneously occurring mystical experiences, with significant and sustained psychological, spiritual, and emotional benefit.

ClinicalTrials.gov

clinicaltrials.gov

Heffter Research Institute | Spirituality

Heffter Research Institute psilocybin studies reveal the potential for reducing psychological distress. Psilocybin may also contribute to spiritual practices and improving overall wellbeing.

heffter.org

The heffter institute was founded by Denis McKenna and David E. Nichols, heffter facilitates, funds, publishes, and directs some amazing independent research regarding psychedelic compounds, this research spans many different fields of study.

The spirituality researchch above is particularly intriguing for me, and I felt that others here may possibly have interest in this area as well.

-eg

 

[Legarto Rey]

Merry Christmas e-g! Your admirable diligence digging and sharing is the gift that keeps on giving. Thanks.

I'm in the "maximal entheogen" school of human history reference frame(egodeath.com). Explored with an entheogen informed curiosity, the near certainty of plant based, "mixed wine" catalysis of mystic experiencing, ubiquitously applied across long spans of human history reveals itself as laughingly obvious.

Not to discount current and renewed emphasis on study and culturally sanctioned "research" of tryptamines/phenethylamines as "potential" faciliatators of the mystic state. Pragmatically speaking, the plants are so overwhelmingly established as the absolutely most ergonomimc and widely applied religious tools throughout the entirety of sentient, Homonid>>Sapien "history". Debates suggesting that plants may not be the actual, Eucharist, are actually absurd. In a theologic perspective, plant driven access into the mystic realms is likely PREEMINENT. All other "techniques" have been/are adjunctive. Meditation is huge, only deep states available for the superlative. The medicines, skillfully administerd>>>>KABOOOOM!

Peace

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

Merry Christmas e-g! Your admirable diligence digging and sharing is the gift that keeps on giving. Thanks.

I'm in the "maximal entheogen" school of human history reference frame(egodeath.com). Explored with an entheogen informed curiosity, the near certainty of plant based, "mixed wine" catalysis of mystic experiencing, ubiquitously applied across long spans of human history reveals itself as laughingly obvious.

Not to discount current and renewed emphasis on study and culturally sanctioned "research" of tryptamines/phenethylamines as "potential" faciliatators of the mystic state. Pragmatically speaking, the plants are so overwhelmingly established as the absolutely most ergonomimc and widely applied religious tools throughout the entirety of sentient, Homonid>>Sapien "history". Debates suggesting that plants may not be the actual, Eucharist, are actually absurd. In a theologic perspective, plant driven access into the mystic realms is likely PREEMINENT. All other "techniques" have been/are adjunctive. Meditation is huge, only deep states available for the superlative. The medicines, skillfully administerd>>>>KABOOOOM!

Peace

Good time for meditation, peaceful contemplation, and of coarse research.

Good time to get some research done, finish up old projects, search for new ones...

Good time for entheogens...

Heffter institute is truly amazing.

Whether you believe this or not David E. Nichols, and Denis McKenna (founders of the heffter institute) , are actually fairly mystical individuals, however not through personality or psychology, but through their experiences. These are both well educated, reasonable, rational, and scientific individuals, yet when you watch a film like "neurons to nirvana" you will see these stuffy intellectuals and scientists begin to speak like prophets and priests when describing psychedelic potential.

The shamanic view has always been that mysticism or spirituality is something you must experience first hand, there is no substitute, and that devotion to dogma, political hierarchies, books and sermons, all these modern concepts of "spirituality" and "religion" are actually antithetical to what spirituality has traditionally been...

And this research in a way is simple confirmation of what most of us already know through first hand experience...

I had the DMT experience, then, quite a while after, I was researching sufi spirituality, I read about the concept of "fanaa", and instantly I understood that the experience being described is identical to my DMT experience:

Fanaa (Arabic: فناء‎‎ fanāʾ ) is the Sufi term for "passing away" or "annihilation" (of the self).[1] Fana means "to die before one dies", a concept highlighted by famous notable Muslim saints such as Rumi and later by Sultan Bahoo.[2] Fana represents a breaking down of the individual ego and a recognition of the fundamental unity of God, creation, and the individual self.[1] Persons having entered this enlightened state obtain awareness of the intrinsic unity (Tawhid) between Allah and all that exists, including the individual's mind. It is coupled conceptually with baqaa, subsistence, which is the state of pure consciousness of and abidance in God. -Wikipedia

Most DMT users will describe this as "dissolving out of existance", and most will also describe their DMT experience exactly as "fanaa" is described, yet they feel it's somehow absurd to feel that "fanaa" was actually referring to a state identical to that of the DMT flash.

After my DMT flash, I read "The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State" also titled the "Bardo thodol", and rather than reading something interpreted as "spiritual abstractions" I actually understood, and it was understood from experience, the experiences being described were identical to how I would have choose to describe my DMT states, and I could instantly relate to what was being described...

The "The Chikhai Bardo" was the initial concept which first drew me to the bardo thodol. "The Chikhai Bardo" and the way in which it is described could double as a description for the initial states of the DMT experience...

The Chikhai Bardo is the after death state described in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead) wherein the consciousness of the dead person fully enters into the light of the dharmakaya or "truth body." (explained in the first part of this series).

In this state, the person temporarily experiences for the first time the state of awareness without a second, that is to say, a state of pure consciousness.

This is the state of non-duality. The first experience here is the sight of the Primordial Clear Light or the "Clear Light of Reality." This is the pure mind of the Buddha, Christ, and all the perfected saints and mystics.
chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com

...so, this happens over and over again...and you think, it can't be coincidence, obviously these psychedelic states and mystical states have a good deal in common, if they are not in fact the same thing...

I think heffter is doing some amazing work, particularly involving psilocybin.

...I think they still need research subjects for the johns Hopkins "meditation/psilocybin" research project, figured someone here may be interested.

-eg

 

[Anaman]

Very interesting studies eg, the entheogenic potential of psychedelics isn’t something to overlook. I think it’s great that alongside studies looking at the treatment of end-of-life anxiety, smoking addiction, alcoholism, depression… that there’s studies looking directly at the possible cause of the healing – the spiritual nature of the experience.

I remember there were unrelated studies with psilocybin and long-term meditators which revealed similar decreases in the brains default-mode-network, which helps to define our sense of self. It’ll be interesting to see if this affects their receptivity during a psilocybin session.

The study with religious professionals reminds me of Walter Pahnkes 'Marsh Chapel Experiment', where even after 25 years all of the graduate divinity students reported their psilocybin session as having “a genuine mystical nature and characterized it as one of the high points of their spiritual life”.

When talking about spiritual or mystical experiences, I’d always be cautious of placing that outside what’s already here. If psychedelics are taken to be mind-manifesting substances, then perhaps they don’t reveal anything we don’t already have within us, personally or cosmically.

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

Very interesting studies eg, the entheogenic potential of psychedelics isn’t something to overlook. I think it’s great that alongside studies looking at the treatment of end-of-life anxiety, smoking addiction, alcoholism, depression… that there’s studies looking directly at the possible cause of the healing – the spiritual nature of the experience.

I remember there were unrelated studies with psilocybin and long-term meditators which revealed similar decreases in the brains default-mode-network, which helps to define our sense of self. It’ll be interesting to see if this affects their receptivity during a psilocybin session.

The study with religious professionals reminds me of Walter Pahnkes 'Marsh Chapel Experiment', where even after 25 years all of the graduate divinity students reported their psilocybin session as having “a genuine mystical nature and characterized it as one of the high points of their spiritual life”.

When talking about spiritual or mystical experiences, I’d always be cautious of placing that outside what’s already here. If psychedelics are taken to be mind-manifesting substances, then perhaps they don’t reveal anything we don’t already have within us, personally or cosmically.

I agree, and rather than "placing outside what is already there" I am more interested in building maps, models, and metaphors, using tools to gain essential understandings...

What psychedelics encourage, and where I hope attention will focus once hallucinogens are culturally integrated to the point where large groups of people can plan research programs without fear of persecution, is the modeling of the after-death state. Psychedelics may do more than model this state; they may reveal the nature of it. Psychedelics will show us that the modalities of appearance and understanding can be shifted so that we can know mind within the context of the One Mind. The One Mind contains all experiences of the Other. There is no dichotomy between the Newtonian universe, deployed throughout light-years of three-dimensional space, and the interior mental universe. They are adumbrations of the same thing. -terence McKenna

Is this not the exact opportunity which we now have?


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I'm glad you mentioned the marsh-Chappell experiment, as I was going to outline this as well, but due to a desire for brevity left it out.

-eg