Mystical Experiences & Healing with Psychedelics
What mechanisms enable classic psychedelics to facilitate healing?
How do single mystical experiences transform individuals?
What underlies this fundamental shift?
One hypothesis is that mystical experiences fundamentally contradict our deeply held beliefs, triggering a process of memory reconsolidation.
The Mystical Experience
Psychedelics are renowned for inducing profound perceptual changes and subjective experiences. A particularly notable aspect is their ability to facilitate mystical experiences.
Though inherently ineffable, mystical experiences often share common themes, including:
Ego dissolution
Transcendence of time and space
Feelings of reverence or profound sacredness
Pure awareness
A sense of unity or oneness (non-duality)
These mystical experiences consistently trigger long-term changes in behavior, attitudes, and values. For instance, a clinical trial involving psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression found that positive long-term outcomes were significantly linked to the occurrence of a mystical experience. Additionally, research involving 288 individuals revealed that "those with full mystical experiences reported more positive changes in all areas surveyed compared to those without such experiences."
Conversely, casual psychedelic users often note that many individuals revert to their baseline after positive experiences. Rather than viewing this as random, we should explore what makes certain psychedelic experiences more “successful” than others. We argue that the mystical experience leads to a fundamental restructuring of our psyche.
Memory Reconsolidation and Healing
Emotional issues often stem from maladaptive beliefs or schemas formed in response to external challenges and traumatic events. These beliefs unconsciously influence how we perceive ourselves, react to experiences, and navigate life.
For example, early childhood neglect may instill a deep-seated belief of inadequacy or worthlessness. This belief can manifest as hypersensitivity to criticism, social anxiety, or feelings of shame regarding perceived flaws.
Healing involves dismantling these maladaptive schemas. Coherence Therapy posits that we can update these schemas through memory reconsolidation, where we identify experiences that directly contradict the emotional learning associated with original memories. This allows us to update problematic beliefs.
The authors of Unlocking the Emotional Brain, a book on Coherence Therapy, suggest that "the brain has a built-in detection system that compares consciously experienced beliefs for inconsistencies with other known information, creating juxtaposition experiences."
Dismantling Maladaptive Beliefs
We rely on a complex belief system to navigate reality, often avoiding uncertainty and overwhelm by maintaining stability in our beliefs. Consequently, we tend to adopt beliefs that fit comfortably within our existing frameworks and limit ourselves to environments that reinforce our beliefs—a phenomenon known as confirmation bias.
Updating core beliefs is challenging, particularly if they originated from emotionally intense experiences. Even when we become aware of maladaptive beliefs, we cannot change them arbitrarily. Healing and integration cannot occur solely through insight or forceful adoption of new beliefs; the mind requires equally intense counteractive experiences for updates. This is where psychedelics come into play.
The authors of “REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics” suggest that classic psychedelics primarily relax the weighting of prior beliefs, loosening the tight grip we hold on our existing beliefs and opening our minds to new perspectives.
During a "heroic dose," as the ego dissolves, all preconceived notions and beliefs fall away. For a brief moment, your mind is free to engage with unfiltered reality. While this can be disorienting as familiar structures dissolve, it is also where transformation occurs.
As the boundaries of self dissolve, you experience a profound sense of connection to everything. There is no separation; you realize that your “self” is merely an abstraction, a construct created for self-soothing. Temporarily, you cease to identify with this character—often referred to as “ego death” or “ego dissolution”—and instead connect with something transcendent, be it pure awareness, cosmic consciousness, or the universal mind. This profound realization contributes to the mystical quality of the experience.
When you experience a sense of oneness with the universe, you "know" that you are the universe. This participatory sense of knowing is more real than anything you have ever experienced, leaving a deep imprint on your psyche.
Consider the profound inconsistency between this experience ("I am the universe") and deeply ingrained beliefs like "I am worthless" or "I am inadequate." This juxtaposition creates a powerful cognitive dissonance, making it challenging to hold these conflicting beliefs simultaneously. If integrated well, the mystical experience can trigger the dismantling of maladaptive core beliefs, resulting in deep healing.
Closing Thoughts
Classic psychedelics not only relax prior maladaptive beliefs but also provide novel, salient experiences to update those beliefs. The more radical the experience, the higher the likelihood of enduring change. If your goal is healing and transformation, it’s essential to optimize for a setting, dosage, and mindset conducive to mystical experiences.
Determining the appropriate dosage for your body is crucial. At lower doses, your defense mechanisms may remain intact, causing you to cling to familiar beliefs for a sense of safety. Even at higher doses, if your set and setting are not ideal, you may deceive yourself, avoiding necessary confrontations.
For a long time, I used conversations and external beauty during my trips to distract myself. It wasn’t until I took a high-dose trip alone, with eyeshades on, that I realized what I had been missing. Terence McKenna’s "heroic dose in a dark room" serves as a reliable heuristic for triggering mystical experiences.
Such a trip can be daunting and destabilizing as your belief system unravels, and it may bring traumas to the surface for processing. However, as Joseph Campbell wisely said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
It is through these “difficult experiences” that true healing and self-evolution can occur. Embracing openness, curiosity, and courage can lead you to places beyond your wildest imagination.
To learn more about navigating such experiences, visit our Navigation page. If you’re seeking to make sense of a challenging mystical experience, I recommend Mysticism and Psychedelics: The Case of the Dark Night by Chris Bache.