The Mystical Experience Questionnaire
Want to know if you had a mystical experience? A good way to find out is by doing a mystical experience questionnaire.
Find out which mystical experience questionnaire you should use and discover more about your experiences.
MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES
Mystical experience is the term we use in psychology to describe a specific altered state of consciousness that transcends the ego identity. The defining characteristics are a sense of transcendence of personal self, oneness, life or living presence in all things, noetic quality (a sense that you encountered ultimate reality), ineffable, positive mood, and time and space transcendence.
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES
You might not resonate with the term mystical experience and may prefer to use terms like awakening experience, spiritual experience or enlightening experience. But these terms all have nuanced meaning. You can find out more about your profound experiences and their nuanced meanings in my complete guide to spiritual experiences.
Specifically, a classic mystical experience is when we have a sense of oneness or unity and ultimate reality or noetic insight, positive mood, and time and space distortions that are difficult to convey in words.
CLASSIC MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
Classic mystical experiences tend to have great spiritual significance. They transform us in some way. They increase personal well-being and personal growth. They change our world view and understanding of reality. They can even change our personality and personal identity.
Using a questionnaire to understand your experience can deepen your understanding of what happened.
MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNIARES AND TRIGGERS
Many things can promote mystical experiences. The most common triggers are spiritual practice, being in nature, emotional crisis and psychedelics. Whether you had a mystical experience in nature, during breathwork or under the influence of psychedelics is irrelevant. The effects are the same.
And while non-psychedelic or spontaneous mystical experiences and hallucinogen occasioned mystical experiences are extraordinarily similar, you might find one questionnaire more appropriate than another.
MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES AND PSYCHOMETRICS
In the West, we like to measure things. Somehow, numbers help us understand the world and our own experiences. A large part of psychology research is based on numbers. We measure things like personality traits, happiness levels and intelligence using surveys and questionnaires. We call this psychometrics.
The problem is that all these scales are flawed. We all have different ideas of what, on a scale of 1- 5, 5 actually means. Is my level 10 happiness the same as your level 10 happiness? Does 9 out of 10 mean I’m happy 90% of the time, or all the time I’m 90% happy? And is my idea of well-being and positive mood the same as your idea of well-being and positive mood?
Despite all these discrepancies or noise, as we call it in psychometrics, the numbers mean something to us. They are meaningful in understanding ourselves and our experiences.
THE PROBLEM OF MEASURING MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES
Measuring mystical experiences is as challenging as measuring anything else that is subjective, like happiness or depression. But there’s an added problem. Mystical experiences, by their very nature, are ineffable. That means it’s difficult to describe them in words.
Having conducted several research projects into mystical experiences, I am very familiar with the different questionnaires out there. None of them are perfect. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, and today, I’ll share a bit about each of them, how you can access them and why you might like to fill out a questionnaire about your experience.
MEASURING IS NOT FOR EVERYONE
Quantity is not quality, and measuring mystical experiences, for some, can even feel offensive. Some people prefer not to measure their experience. And that’s OK. Trying to label and conceptualise such deep and meaningful experiences can feel inappropriate. No words can describe their experience, and no number can tell them anything about it.
BENEFITS OF DOING MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNAIRES
But for others, the whole process is meaningful. They might not be interested in the numbers, but the opportunity to reflect on their experience brings deeper meaning and understanding to what happened. This process can re-ignite our experience. Just thinking about the experience and bringing it to the forefront of our minds can help us to, in some way, capture that feeling again. To capture the sense of oneness, the noetic wisdom and the love, and be immersed in the mystical again can bring us closer to our true selves.
Talking about your mystical experience and sharing it with others can create problems. So, using a questionnaire to reflect on your experience is a good option is talking about it could be problematic.
MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNAIRES
The MEQ Family
The MEQ family is a group of mystical experience questionnaires that share many of the same questions but each has a different factor structure and number of questions.
Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ43) or the Pahnke Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire
The MEQ43 was the first of a family of mystical experience questionnaires called MEQ. It was created by Walter Pahnke for his renowned PhD study, informally known as The Good Friday Experiment. It is a subset of questions from the States of Consciousness Questionnaire (SOCQ).
It has 43 questions and was designed to discern if participants of The Good Friday Experiment had mystical type experiences during a Good Friday church service while under the influence of LSD.
The questionnaire was based on prior work by William James, Evelyn Underhill, and Walter Stace. Pahnke added questions about time and space perception even though this element was not fundamental to the body of work he drew on.
The MEQ43 has been used extensively in psychedelic research to measure psychedelic mystical experiences prior to the development of the MEQ30. The underlying characteristics (factor structure) measured by the MEQ43 are Internal Unity, External Unity, Transcendence of Time and Space, Ineffable and Paradoxicality, Sense of Sacredness, Noetic Quality, and Deeply-felt Positive Mood.
Mystical Experience Questionnaire 30 (MEQ30)
The MEQ30 is the revised mystical experience questionnaire. In 2012, MacLean and her team from John Hopkins revised the MEQ43, removing 13 questions and leaving 30. Their results were based on the responses of mystical experiences that had occurred only under the influence of psychedelic drugs. They warned that further research would be needed to determine if the MEQ30 was appropriate for non-psychedelic mystical experiences.
The revised mystical experience questionnaire, the MEQ30, has been used extensively in psychedelic research. The underlying characteristics (factor structure) measured by the MEQ30 are Mystical, Positive Mood, Time-Space, and Ineffability. It is the best mystical experience questionnaire for psilocybin occasioned mystical experiences.
Mystical Experience Questionnaire 25 (MEQ25)
In 2022, I researched the appropriateness and reliability of the MEQ30 for measuring non-psychedelic mystical experiences and revised the MEQ43, which became MEQ25. This new revised mystical experience questionnaire is specifically for mystical experiences where there were no psychedelic drugs involved.
Underlying characteristics measured in this revised mystical experience questionnaire, the MEQ25, are Sacred Unity, Time and Space Transcendence, Noetic Quality and Ineffable and Paradoxical.
You can read my peer-reviewed and published research here.
Mystical Experience Questionnaire Brief Scale (MEQ4)
During psychedelic research, participants have to complete numerous questionnaires. Sometimes while still under the influence of the psychoactive substance and sometimes after when they are fatigued. In 2024, Strickland, Garcia-Romeu and Johnson revised and created a brief version of the MEQ30, which contains only four questions. One question for each underlying characteristic. This new scale could potentially reduce the burden on research participants.
COMPLETE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
The MEQ43 was initially created so that researchers could understand whether participants in The Good Friday Experiment had had an intense and profound mystical experience. However, because the setting was a religious sermon and the participants were religious, it is possible that they may have gained insightful knowledge, had a profoundly sacred experience or felt positive emotions without having a mystical experience. To control for this, a score equal to or above 60% on all latent factors or underlying characteristics was considered a complete mystical experience.
This cut-off is used extensively with the revised mystical experience questionnaire, the MEQ30. So, a score of 60% or higher on the underlying characteristics of mystical, positive mood, time and space, and ineffable would be classified as a complete mystical experience.
This method could also be applied to the revised mystical experience questionnaire, the MEQ25.
REVISED MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE (MEQ)
The MEQ family of questionnaires has been around a long time and has been used extensively. With the MEQ30 being the most widely used mystical experiences questionnaire. But that doesn't mean they're a perfect fit and capture all aspects of our profound experiences. Other scales and measurements have been developed and no doubt future research will add to the collection. Here are some of the other mystical experiences questionnaires available.
Other Mystical Experience Questionnaires
Hood’s Mysticism Scale
The original M Scale was created in the 1970s by Ralph Wood and was designed to measure mysticism over a lifetime. It has since been revised to measure mystical experiences. It has 32 questions, and, like the MEQ, there are shorter versions. In developing the M-Scale, Hood drew on the same literature as Pahnke. There are four questions for each of the eight characteristics outlined by Stace. The underlying characteristics or factor structure are Ego Quality, Unifying Quality, Inner Subjective Quality, Temporal / Spatial Quality, Noetic Quality, Ineffability, Positive Affect, and Religious Quality.
Participants reported that the questionnaire was confusing due to statements being put in the negative.
The 11 Dimension Altered States of Consciousness (11D-ASC)
While the 11D-ASC (Studerus et al., 2010) measures the broader category of altered states of consciousness and doesn’t precisely measure mystical experiences, it can be used to gain insight into your experience. It is sometimes used in researching mystical experiences because it’s considered stable across triggers. In other words, this questionnaire can compare experiences even if they had different triggers.
The 11D-ASC factor structure includes visual phenomena, emotional experiences, spirituality, ego dissolution, and sense of unity.
The Ego Dissolution Scale (EDS)
The EDS (Nour et al., 2016) measures the extent to which individuals experience a loss of self-boundaries, a sense of oneness, and diminished ego during psychedelic and other altered states of consciousness like mystical experiences. It is used in research on consciousness and mysticism.
The EDS has a single-factor structure, meaning that all the items on the scale tend to reflect a unified concept of ego dissolution, characterized by experiences such as loss of self-boundaries, sense of unity, and a diminished sense of ego.
ADVISE FOR FILLING OUT A MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE
It’s important to know that mystical experience questionnaires were designed for research purposes and nothing else. The questions can feel arbitrary, and so can the numbers. Remember, you are doing this for you. If something doesn’t resonate, move on. No questionnaire can say anything about your experience. That cannot be untouched.
Before you start, ensure you have plenty of time for the questionnaire. Find a quiet space where you can be alone. You don’t want to rush this or be distracted. You might want some time after you complete the questionnaire to reflect on and process the experience. Honour your experience by giving it the time it deserves.
Before you start the questionnaire you might like to take a moment to do some breathwork or meditation. Be still. And reconnect with that moment in your life. If you need support after or would like to talk to someone about your experience, feel free to contact me.
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