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:



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)







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

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:


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...



...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

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...



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