Psychedelics and mysticism: past, present and future – Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir

Описание: Tatiana Tiaynen Qadir's lecture "Psychedelics and mysticism: past, present and future" from the Psykedeelit 2023 conference held in Turku, Finland on November 23–24, 2023.

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"Many influential thinkers in the psychedelic movement that emerged in the West in the 1950s shared the view that psychedelic experiences culminate in 'mystical experiences' of union. Drug experiences were academically connected to mysticism even earlier, most famously by psychologist William James who formulated the now-classic definition of mysticism as an ineffable, noetic, transient, and receptive experience. This definition shaped the interdisciplinary field on psychedelics and mysticism but has now been effectively critiqued. The recent 'psychedelic renaissance' has turned to biomedical explanations and applications of psychedelics, dominated by the 'neuro-turn' in psychology. As a result, recent psychedelic insights have often not been connected with new research in mysticism. Many questions are unaddressed, such as to what extent and how are psychedelic mystical experiences are culturally constructed, religiously rooted or universally shared. Another set of questions concerns potentially repeating colonial appropriation of Indigenous, plant-based spiritual practices. This paper seeks to reconnect the two strands by tracing key developments in the interdisciplinary scientific study of mysticism and psychedelics since the 1950s across social theory, underlining the shift from a constructionist-perennialist divide in early debates to a biomedical-cultural one today and indicating how future, interdisciplinary psychedelic research may be decolonized and culturally contextual."

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