The Varieties of Mystical Experience
Is there a the difference between Psychedelic Mystical Experiences and Non-Psychedelic Mystical Experiences?
In that moment, everything changed. It wasn’t just that my perception had become more expansive and lucid, I had changed, I was no longer a thing. I was no thing. And yet I was full of joy and wonder; the world was magical, and I was in awe. Thoughts, judgments, desires, and aversion all receded, and all that was left was inner peace and a beingness. I was having a mystical experience, though I didn’t know it at the time.
Mystical experiences are, in fact, a common human phenomena that have been documented across cultures for millennia. Over the last 40 years one-third of North Americans consistently report to Gallup polls that they have had such an experience (1). IMERE have collected hundreds of accounts that you can read here. What’s remarkable about these transient experiences is that they have a profound and sometimes transformational effect on those who have them (2).
Mystical Experiences – a hot topic for research
It turns out that Gallup are not the only ones researching mystical experiences. Some transpersonal psychologists have carried out qualitative studies into mystical experiences, but that’s not where we see most of the research. Psycho-pharmacological psychologists have discovered that they can engender mystical experiences using psychoactive substances. They also discovered that the intensity of a mystical experience can predict its healing and transformational potential (3). As a result, research into psychedelic mystical experiences is booming.
Many people believe that psychedelic mystical experiences are the same as mystical experiences that occur without psychoactive substances because they both have healing and transformational potential. But there’s hardly any research that actually compares them, let alone confirms this assumption.
We do know that psychedelic and non-psychedelic mystical experiences do share some similarities.
Whether you’ve had a mystical experience under the influence of psychedelics or entheogens or without you probably experience all or most of the characteristics in the list on the left.
The Mystical Experience Questionnaire
One of the challenges of comparing these two types of mystical experiences is how researchers measure them. Over the last 50 years, a scale to measure psychedelic mystical experiences has been developed and refined from the Mystical Experience Questionnaire, called the MEQ43, to the MEQ304. The scale is largely based on the theory of Walter Stace, who found that mystical experiences tend to share the same core characteristics(5).
The MEQ30 is now being used for non-psychedelic mystical experiences and to compare the two types. But for a scale to be valid on a different population than the one it was intended for it must be tested on that population. In this case, the MEQ30 should be tested on people who’ve had an experience without psychedelics.
So, the question is, are non-psychedelic and psychedelic mystical experiences subjectively the same? And is the MEQ30 a good measure for non-psychedelic mystical experiences, or should we be using a different questionnaire?
Researching the Differences between Psychedelic Mystical Experiences and Non-psychedelic Mystical Experiences
To find out, I conducted some research, which involved getting people who’ve had these experiences to fill out the MEQ43 and, consequently, the MEQ30. If you’d like to read the peer-reviewed article about my research, you can find it here.
So, what did I find when I analyzed the results? It appeared that there may actually be a subjective difference in these experiences, which means there might also be a more appropriate questionnaire to measure non-psychedelic mystical experiences.
I investigated what a questionnaire would look like with an alternative set of questions and whether different subjective characteristics of non-psychedelic mystical experiences would emerge. To do this, I used a statistical analysis called exploratory factor analysis, which reveals important underlying characteristics and indicates which questions are most important for capturing them.
The Underlying Characteristics of Non-psychedelic Mystical Experiences
As expected, the new questionnaire for measuring non-psychedelic mystical experiences, the MEQ25, is quite similar to the MEQ30, but there are some important differences.
While some of the core characteristics sound the same, they include different questions. For example, MEQ30 questions about losing one’s sense of time or awareness of where they are were, are not in the new Time Space Transcendent subscale. Plus, the new subscale, Ineffable and Paradoxical, has a question that accounts for a common characteristic of mystical experiences, paradoxicality, that is not in the MEQ30.
Noetic Perspectives and Transformation
But the biggest difference is the emergence of a subscale that specifically measures the noetic characteristics. This is important because the noetic aspect of ME is associated with a positive impact on spirituality, health, family life, purpose, and a reduced fear of death (6). It’s also potentially the nexus of the therapeutic potential of mystical experiences (7). In other words, it might be what makes these experiences so transformative.
From my own experience, I think I would agree, but, for me, the noetic aspect and paradoxicality were also the most challenging aspects of my experience to integrate. I don’t think I’m alone, new research on integrating mystical experiences is emerging and organisations like ACISTE provide support for integrating these transformative experiences.
The Future of Mystical Experience Research
Being the only questionnaire to cover all the characteristics of mystical experiences laid out by Stace and especially emphasizing the noetic aspect, the MEQ25 could help researchers understand both the challenges of integrating people’s mystical experiences and the potential enduring transformational effects.
But before the MEQ25 can be used to advance our understanding of non-psychedelic mystical experiences, the questionnaire would have to be tested on a bigger sample. This would ensure that the results are not specific to our participants but that the scale measures typical non-psychedelic mystical experiences.
What’s more, my research findings should be considered with caution. After all, it was a research project for a post-graduate Psychology degree, and that meant time and resources were limited, which undoubtedly had an impact on the project’s robustness. That said, as a preliminary piece of research, it raises questions and draws attention to the need for more research in this area.
My research discovered a potential new questionnaire for measuring non-psychedelic mystical experiences, which is great but doesn’t really help us compare the two experiences. For that, researchers would need to choose a combination of measures that captures all the nuances of both types of mystical experience.
Perhaps one day, we’ll see research moving in this direction.
Thanks for reading, and as always, keep striving for growth and well-being, and never settle for less!
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Here’s to your well-being, personal growth and success!
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References
1. Gallup, G. H. (2003). Religious Awakenings Bolster Americans' Faith. https://news.gallup.com/poll/7582/religious-awakenings-bolster-americans-faith.aspx
2. Miller, W. R. (2004). The Phenomenon of Quantum Change. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 4(4), 453-460. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20000
3. Griffiths, R. R., Johnson, M. W., Carducci, M. A., Umbricht, A., Richards, W. A., Richards, B. D., Cosimano, M. P., & Klinedinst, M. A. (2016). Psilocybin produces substantial and sustained decreases in depression and
anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer: A randomized double-blind trial. Journal of Psychopharmacology30(12) 1181–1197. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881116675513
4. MacLean, K. A., Leoutsakos, J. M. S., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2012). Factor Analysis of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: A Study of Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 51(4), 72–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2012.01685.x
5. Stace, W. T. (1960). Mysticism and Philosophy. MacMillan & Co. Ltd. (this edition 1961)
6. Yaden, D. B., Le Nguyen, K. D., Kern, M. L., Wintering, N. A., Eichstaedt, J. C., Schwartz, H. A., Buffone, A. E. K., Smith, L. K., Waldman, M. R., Hood, R. W., and Newberg, A. B. (2017). The noetic quality: A multimethod exploratory study. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(1), 54-62. http://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000098
7. James, E., Robertshaw, T. L., Hoskins, M., & Sessa, B. (2019). Psilocybin occassioned mystical-type experiences. Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental. https://doi.org/10.1002/hup.2742
