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. You might not resonate with this term and may prefer to use terms like awakening experience, spiritual experience or enlightening experience. Either way, they tend to have great spiritual significance. Using a questionnaire to understand your experience can deepen your understanding of what happened.
PSYCHOMETRICS
In the West, we like to measure things. Somehow, numbers help us understand the world and our own experience. 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?
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.
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 mystical experiences prior to the development of the MEQ30. The underlying characteristics 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 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 of the MEQ30 for measuring non-psychedelic mystical experiences and revised the MEQ43, which became MEQ25. This new questionnaire is specifically for mystical experiences where there were no psychedelic drugs involved.
Underlying characteristics measured in the MEQ25 are Sacred Unity, Time and Space Transcendence, Noetic Quality and Ineffable and Paradoxical.
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.
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. They 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.
COMPLETE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
The MEQ43 was initially created so that researchers could understand whether participants in The Good Friday Experiment had had an intense 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 MEQ30. So a score about 60% on the underlying characteristics of mystical, positive mood, time and space and ineffable would be classed as a complete mystical experience.
This method could also be applied to the MEQ25.
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.
