This document discusses mystical and altered states of consciousness. It describes key features of mystical experiences, including unity, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability. Methods that have been used historically and cross-culturally to induce mystical states are outlined, such as meditation, sensory deprivation/overload, fasting, and psychedelic substances. Research is presented showing psychedelics like psilocybin can occasion experiences meeting definitions of mysticism and can have lasting positive effects. The potential therapeutic value of inducing mystical states is discussed.

1. Domenick Sportelli D.O.
Tom Draschil M.D.
The Mystical Experience and its
Potential Role in Psychiatry

2. Learning Objectives
1) Learn the core features of a mystical
experience.
2) Understand its role in history and potential
therapeutic value.
3) Learn about our research to establish a non-
pharmacological method for safely inducing a
mystical experience.

3. Consciousness
 Arnold M. Ludwig (1966): ‘Altered states of
consciousness’ – any mental state induced by
physiological, psychological, or pharmacological
maneuvers or agents, which deviates from the
normal waking state of consciousness (waking
beta wave state).
 a.k.a. “altered state of mind,” “altered state of
awareness”

4. Altered States of Consciousness
ASC
 Delirium
 Dementia
 Depersonalization
 Dissociative states
 Ictal/postictal states
 Alcohol intoxication
 Dreaming
 Meditation
 Runner’s high
 Psychedelic states
 Hypnosis

5. NOSC
 ASC – problematic as the word 'altered'
"suggests that these states represent a deviation
from the way consciousness should be.
"Alternate" makes it clear that different states of
consciousness prevail at different times for
different reasons and that no one state is
considered standard.” - Zinberg (1977)
 Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness (NOSC)

6. Mystical Experience
 Mysticism- the practice of religious ecstasies (i.e.
religious experiences during alternate states of
consciousness) Encyclopæida Britannica
 “…certain fundamental characteristics of the
experience itself which are universal and not
restricted to any particular religion or culture…”
Panke (1967)

7. Mystical Experience
“Fundamental,” “universal” characteristics:
1. Unity (internal or external)
2. Noetic quality
3. Ineffability/paradoxically
4. Sense of sacredness
5. Positive mood
6. Transcendence of time and space
Stace (1960)

8. Oceanic Boundlessness
“By religious feeling, what I mean—altogether
independently of any dogma, any Credo, any
organization of the Church, any Holy Scripture, any
hope for personal salvation, etc.—the simple and
direct fact of a feeling of 'the eternal' (which may
very well not be eternal, but simply without
perceptible limits, and as if oceanic). This feeling is
in truth subjective in nature. It is a contact.” -
Romain Rolland December 5, 1927

9. Oceanic Feeling
 Civilization and Its Discontents - Freud (1930)
 Freud locates the oceanic feeling within the
primitive ego.
 “An infant at the breast does not as yet
distinguish his ego from the external world as the
source of sensations flowing in upon him.”
 Freud argues that the religious feeling (or oceanic
feeling) is a “preserved primitive ego feeling.”

10. Mystical Experience
William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902):
1. Noetic – illuminations/revelations that carry with
them a curious sense of authority. A state of
knowing.
2. Ineffable- defies expression. A
state of feeling.
3. Transient – lasts for a short
period of time.
4. Passive - the experience
happens to the individual, largely
without conscious control.

11. Peak Experiences
 Peak experiences are joyous and exciting
moments in life, involving sudden feelings of
intense happiness and well-being, wonder and
awe, and possibly also involving an awareness of
transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth.
 Peak-experiences can be
considered a transient
self-actualization of the person.
Maslow (1964)

12. Peak Experiences
Maslow (1964) “Religion, values, and Peak
Experience”
 “The very beginning, the intrinsic core, the essence,
the universal nucleus of every known high religion
(unless Confucianism is also called a religion) has
been the private, lonely, personal illumination,
revelation, or ecstasy of some acutely sensitive
prophet or seer.”
 These revelations were “…perfectly natural, human
peak-experiences…which were phrased in terms of
whatever conceptual, cultural, and linguistic
framework the particular seer had available.”

13. Core Features of
the Mystical Experience
W. T. Stace – Mysticism and Philosophy (1960)
1. Unity (internal or external)
2. Noetic Quality
3. Ineffable
4. Sacredness
5. Positive Mood
6. Transcendence of time and space

14. Internal Unity
(The Unitary Consciousness)
 "Suddenly…I felt the approach of the mood. Irresistibly it took
possession of my mind and will, lasted what seemed an
eternity, and disappeared in a series of rapid sensations which
resembled the awakening from anesthetic influence. One
reason why I disliked this kind of trance was that I could not
describe it to myself. I cannot even now find words to render it
intelligible. It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive
obliteration of space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous
factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are
pleased to call our Self. In proportion as these conditions of
ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an
underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. At
last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self. The
universe became without form and void of content.” -J. A.
Symonds
Stace (1960)

15. External Unity
(all things are One)
 "In that time the consciousness of God's nearness
came to me sometimes. I say God, to describe what
is indescribable. A presence, I might say, yet that is
too suggestive of personality, and the moments of
which I speak did not hold the consciousness of a
personality, but something in myself made me feel
myself a part of something bigger than I that was
controlling. I felt myself one with the grass, the trees,
birds, insects, everything in Nature. I exulted in the
mere fact of existence, of being a part of it all—the
drizzling rain, the shadows of the clouds, the tree-
trunks, and so on.” - Edwin Starbuck
Stace (1960)

16. Core Features of
the Mystical Experience
1. Unity (internal or external)
2. Noetic Quality
3. Ineffable
4. Sacredness
5. Positive Mood
6. Transcendence of time and space
Stace (1960)

17. Transcendence of time and space
“…Characteristic disorientation in time and space,
or even the lack of consciousness of time and
space. Phrased positively, this is like experiencing
universality and eternity . . . The person in the
peak-experiences may feel a day passing as if it
were minutes or also a minute so intensely lived
that it might feel like a day or a year or an eternity
even. He may also lose his consciousness of being
located in a particular place.” Maslow (1964)

18. The search for the Mystical
Experience
“The deepest need of man, then, is to overcome his
separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.
The panic of complete isolation can be overcome only
by such a radical withdrawal from the world outside
that the feeling of separation disappears – because
the world outside, from which one is separated, has
disappeared.”
 Erich Fromm

19. The search for the mystical
experience.
 Work with breath
 Pranayama, Buddhist
fire breath, sufi
breathing
 Sound
 Drumming, rattling,
gongs, chanting,
mantras
 Sensory deprivation
 Vision quests, desert,
caves
 Sensory overload
 Aboriginal rituals
 Extreme pain
 Physiological
 Fasting
 Sleep deprivation
 Meditation
 Zen, yogas, tibetan
dzogchen

20. Psychedelic substances
Entheogen
noun
1. a chemical substance, typically of plant origin, that is ingested to
produce a non ordinary state of consciousness for religious or spiritual
purposes. -oxford dictionary
 Hashish
 Peyote
 Ololiuqui
 Ayahuasca
 Eboga
 Psilocybin mexicana
 Psilocybe azurescens
 Hawaiian woodrose
 Secretion form the toad
bufu alvarius
 Pacific fish kyphosus
fuscus

21. Mans search for the mystical
experience
• Major role in human history
– Principle vehicle in the ritual/spiritual life
• Meditation
– 1500BC hindu traditions of vedantism
– 6th 5th centuries Taoist China Buddhist India
– 8th century Japanese Budhism and Zen
• Current; Mantra meditation, relaxation response,
mindfulness, zen, TM…
• Commonality: Focused attention

22. Carl Jung “Active Imagination”
An “inner dialogue” used and developed by Carl Jung
as a way of establishing a deeper dialogue with the
unconscious.
• The term “self” was used by Jung to designate a
“transpersonal” center or “totality” of the human
psyche… A greater objective personality
• “ego” describes the “lesser”
subjective personality of the
everyday self

23. Carl Jung-Active Imagination
• Like all the Jungian archetypes the “Self” is never
completely “knowable” and can be experienced an re-
experienced in many different ways.
1) Being alone by oneself and settling the thoughts of the
ego; Consciousness giving space to the Unconscious
2) Make contact with the unconscious, in the form of
images, fantasies and emotions; these are written down,
drawn or painted to give an external form
3) The ego reacts by confronting the emerging material
4) Conclusions are drawn and enacted in life

24. Man’s Search for the Experience
• Vision Quest (Rite of Passage)
– Among the Plains Indians the vision quest was the primary
means of establishing a link with the spirit world (Sander
1996)
– Teenage years; communion for self identity
– Isolation, secluded in nature
– Preceded by sweat lodge, sleep deprivation and Fasting for
up to 4 days
– Expectation to communicate
with a spirit guide
• Set and setting to pursue vision

25. Psilocybin
 200 species of mushroom
 Psilocin; euphoria, VH, change perception, spiritual
experiences, altered sense of time
 Murals dated 9000-7000 BC Sahara Desert and Alegeria
 6000 year old pictographs Spanish village Villar del Humo
identified as Psilocybe hispanica
 Mayan language teonanactatl’ “gods flesh”
 Partial Agonist with high affinity for 5HT2a, less tightly to
5HT1a,1d,2c
 Psychotomimetic properties can be blocked in a dose dependant
fashion by 5HTa2 antagonist ketanserin and risperdone
 Vollenweider 1998

26. “radical withdrawal from the world outside that the
feeling of separation disappears…”
 Peyote (mescaline)
2-3,4,5 trimethoxyphenethylamine
Agonist 5-HT2a,c
 Cora, Huichol, Kiowa, Comanche and
Tarahumera Indians, Native American Church
 Ceremonies vary from tribe to tribe
 Celebrate birth of child, naming of baby, doctoring
ceremonies, service for the dead, Easter, New year
 Singing, Drumming, Chanting
 A “sacrament”, induced well being and visions,
a “messenger” enabling the individual to
communicate with God (Shultes 1992)

27. “…radical withdrawal from the world outside that the feeling of
separation disappears…”
N,N - Dimethyltryptamine
 Ayahuasca (vine of the souls)
 Utlilized by indigenous populations of the amazon basin
 Evidence in the form of pottery vessels, anthropomorphic
figurines, snuffing trays date plant hallucinogen use in the
Ecuadorian Amazon by 1500 -2000 BC (Mckenna 1998)
 Boiling/soaking components
 Banisteriopsis cappi (Potient MAO-A inhibitors)
 Psychotria viridis (N,N- Dimethlytryptamine)
 *DMT alone is not orally active without this potent MAOI
 Agonist properties of N,N-dimethyltryptamine at serotonin 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C
receptors.
 Smith et al,, 1998

28. • DMT
– Rick Strassman, M.D.
Administered approximately 400 doses of DMT to 60 human volunteers. Of the
60 human volunteers who've ingested DMT, more than half reported similar
experiences. These experiences ranged from profound
encounters/interaction with non-human beings to observing highly detailed,
self-transforming geometric patterns and other things of similar nature.
– Dose response study of N,N Dimethyltryptamine in Humans; Strassman et al.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 1994
• “There was a movement of color, the colors were words, I heard what they
were saying to me. I was trying to look out but the colors were saying “God is
IN every cell of your body” and I was feeling it, The colors kept telling me
things, but I also felt it, I say felt it but it was more like “knowing” that God is
in everything and that we are all connected.”
– Several days later this subject wrote: I am changed and will never be the
same, I don’t think anyone reading this can truly grasp what I felt, can
really understand it completely. The euphoria goes on into eternity, and I
am part of that eternity

29. Mans search for the mystical
experience
“No matter how close each of us
becomes to another, there remains a
final unbridgeable gap; each of us
enters existence alone and must
depart from it alone. The existential
conflict is thus the tension between
our awareness of our absolute
isolation and our wish to be part of a
larger whole”
 Irvin Yalom

30. Hard Wired?
• In 2011, Nicholas V. Cozzi, of the University of Wisconsin School of
Medicine and Public Health, concluded that INMT, an enzyme that
associated with the biosynthesis of DMT and endogenous
hallucinogens, is present in the primate (rhesus macaque) pineal
gland, retinal ganglion and spinal cord
>>>New data now establish that the enzyme actively produces DMT in the
pineal.
• In 2013 Rick Strassman et al,
– LC/MS/MS analysis of the endogenous dimethyltryptamine
hallucinogens, their precursors, and major metabolites in rat pineal
gland microdialysate
• Steven A. Barkera*, Jimo Borjiginb,
Izabela Lomnickaa and Rick Strassman ;
Biomedical Chromatography, 2013
Rhesus macaque pineal gland

31. Biosynthesis of Psilocybin
Serotonin

32. Can this experience be therapeutic?
• A RCCT: The effect of a mindfulness meditation
based stress reduction program on mood and
symptoms of stress in CA outpatients
– Speca et al; Psychosomatic medicine, 2000
• Effective in decreasing mood disturbance and stress
symptoms
• Spirituality influences health related quality of life
in men with prostate cancer
– Krupski et al; Psycho-oncology, 2006
• Low spirituality was associated with significantly worse
physical and mental health, sexual function

33. Therapeutic?
 Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type
experiences having substantial and sustained
personal meaning and spiritual significance
 R. R. Griffiths & W. A. Richards & U. McCann & R.
Jesse, Johns Hopkins Med School. 2006
– Thirty volunteers received orally administered psilocybin or
methylphenidate active placebo
– Volunteers completed questionnaires assessing drug effects
and mystical experience immediately after and 2 months after
sessions.
– When administered under supportive conditions, psilocybin
occasioned experiences similar to spontaneously occurring
mystical experiences. The ability to occasion such
experiences prospectively will allow rigorous scientific
investigations of their causes and consequences.
– At 2 months, the volunteers rated the psilocybin experience as
having substantial personal meaning and spiritual significance
and attributed to the experience sustained positive changes in
attitudes and behavior consistent with changes rated by

34. Therapeutic?
• Psilocybin and the treatment of alcoholism
– University of New Mexico
• Open label pilot study
• Psilocybin plus MET
• Use of psilocybin to reduce psycho-spiritual
anxiety, depression and physical pain of terminal
CA patients
– Harbor, UCLA
• Hopkins- Psilocybin and Spirituality
– Ongoing, Roland Griffiths
 Safety and Efficacy of LSD Assisted
Psychotherapy for Anxiety Associated with Life
Threatening Diseases
 Gasser et al, 2014; Journal of Nervous and Mental
Disease.

35. How to Quantify the Experience
• Mystical Experience Questionnaire
– Developed by Pahnke (1963, 1969) as a tool for the
evaluation of single mystical experiences occasioned by
hallucinogens.
• Pahnke, Walter. The Good Friday Experiment, Harvard U.
• Based on Stace’s conceptual framework (1960)
– Covers the major dimensions of the classical mystical
experience
• Unity (internal/external)
• Transcendence of time and space
• Noetic quality
• Sacredness
• Positive mood
• Inneffability/paridoxicality

36. REVISED MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
QUESTIONNAIREInstructions: Looking back on the entirety of your session, please rate the degree to which at any time during that session you experienced the
following phenomena. Answer each question according to your feelings, thoughts, and experiences at the time of the session. In
making each of your ratings, use the following scale:
0 – none; not at all 3 – moderate
1 – so slight cannot decide 4 – strong (equivalent in degree to any other strong experience)
2 – slight 5 – extreme (more than any other time in my life and stronger than 4)
Factor 1: Mystical
Internal Unity
1) Freedom from the limitations of your personal self and feeling a unity or bond with what was felt
to be greater than your personal self.
2) Experience of pure being and pure awareness (beyond the world of sense impressions).
3) Experience of oneness in relation to an “inner world” within.
4) Experience of the fusion of your personal self into a larger whole.
5) Experience of unity with ultimate reality.
6) Feeling that you experienced eternity or infinity.
External Unity
7) Experience of oneness or unity with objects and/or persons perceived in your surroundings.
8) Experience of the insight that “all is One”.
9) Awareness of the life or living presence in all things.
Noetic Quality
10) Gain of insightful knowledge experienced at an intuitive level.
11) Certainty of encounter with ultimate reality (in the sense of being able to “know” and “see” what
is really real at some point during your experience.
12) You are convinced now, as you look back on your experience, that in it you encountered
ultimate reality (i.e., that you “knew” and “saw” what was really real).

37. REVISED MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
QUESTIONNAIRE
Sacredness
13) Sense of being at a spiritual height.
14) Sense of reverence.
15) Feeling that you experienced something profoundly sacred and holy.
Factor 2: Positive Mood
16) Experience of amazement.
17) Feelings of tenderness and gentleness.
18) Feelings of peace and tranquility.
19) Experience of ecstasy.
20) Sense of awe or awesomeness.
21) Feelings of joy.
Factor 3: Transcendence of Time and Space
22) Loss of your usual sense of time.
23) Loss of your usual sense of space.
24) Loss of usual awareness of where you were.
25) Sense of being “outside of” time, beyond past and future.
26) Being in a realm with no space boundaries.
27) Experience of timelessness.
Factor 4: Ineffability
28) Sense that the experience cannot be described adequately in words.
29) Feeling that you could not do justice to your experience by describing it in words.
30) Feeling that it would be difficult to communicate your own experience to others who have not had similar
experiences.

38. MEQ
 Several studies have demonstrated the sensitivity
of the MEQ to the effects of psilocybin and other
classic hallucinogens
 Doblin; 1991
 Pahnke; 1963, 1969
 Richards; 1977
 Griffiths; 2006, 2008, 2011
 MEQ scores higher then active placebo
 Factor analysis of the Mystical Experience
Questionnaire.
 Maclean et al, 2012. Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine
 The factor analysis results provide initial evidence of the

39. Potential role of the mystical
experience in psychiatry?
1. Mystical experience therapy - The experience in and of
itself can be healing. (classic psychedelic psychotherapy).
2. Psycholytic -(literally, mind-loosening)– gives us insight to
unconscious material we can use for processing in
psychotherapy.
 Make the unconscious conscious.
Maslow (1964)
Grinspoon L, & Doblin R (2001)
1) Prevent self destructive actions
 Suicide
 Self Harm
 Substance Abuse/Addiction
2) “Abort existential meaningless”
3) “Death may lose its dread aspect”
 Alcoholics Anonymous
 Chronic illness – LSD,
Psilocybin
 End of life cancer study NYU
psilocybin

40. How Do We Reliably Induce a
Mystical Experience?
1st problem: Establish a method of safely and reliably
inducing a mystical experience in a controlled clinical
environment.
 Psychedelic drugs: psilocybin, LSD, DMT
 Schedule I drugs
 Safety
 Religion: Christianity, Sufism, Kabbalah, Santería
 Unethical
 Not-reliable (mystical experiences tend to be
spontaneous)
 Meditation/Yoga
 Time. Often takes months to years.

41. Holotropic Breathwork
• Developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof
• A technique to induce Tx NOSC
• Coined the term Holotropic
 Neologism from Greek: ὅλος τρέπειν
 holos = whole
 trepein = moving toward or in the direction of something.
 Oriented toward wholeness – NOSC w/ healing potential.
Grof & Grof (2010)

42. Holotropic Breathwork
 HB sessions range 1-3 hours and are terminated
by the patient.
 Described as “industrial strength meditation.”
 3 components:
1. Prolonged hyperventilation (>20 min)
2. Evocative music
3. Body work

43. Hyperventilation
• Physiological and cognitive changes associated
with
 Hypocapnia
 Respiratory alkalosis
• Physical sx: dizziness,
palpitations, and
tingling/numbness of the
extremities, carpopedal
spasms.
Rhinewine & Williams (2007)

44. Hyperventilation – Cognitive Sx:
>8 min - ringing/roaring in the ears, clouded vision, and
feelings of lightness, astonishment, and/or euphoria.
>15 min –perceptual distortions and subjective “visions”
>20 minutes – holotropic state of consciousness. Can
be maintained by breathing.
• Changes related to transient hypofrontality - a brief period of unusually
low activity in the frontal cortex.
• Transient hypofrontality hypothesized to underlie a number of other
altered states of consciousness:
 Runner’s high
 Meditation
 Half-asleep states (hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations)
 Hypnosis
 Some drug-induced NOSC (psilocybin, LDS).
Rhinewine & Williams (2007)

45. Holotropic Breathwork Session
1. Lasts 1-3 hours
2. Terminated by the client
3. Followed by integration work
a) Mandela – patient’s paint, draw, or write about their
experience as a way to express the ineffable content of
HB session.
b) Group sharing session

46. Research Project
Purpose: Better understand the NOSC induced by the
voluntary hyperventilation procedure HB.
Objective:
1) Describe the effects of Holotropic Breathwork on
mood states (descriptive study)
2) Determine how frequently a complete mystical
experience is induced by the technique of Holotropic
Breathwork.
Hypothesis: Holotrpoic Breathwork can induce a
complete mystical experience (i.e. a score of 60% or
higher on each subscale of the Revised Mystical
Experience Questionnaire).

47. Research design and methods
N= 20-30subjects will be recruited from individuals who
are previously and independently enrolled in privately
affiliated Holotropic Breathwork workshops
3 Individual on site questionnaires
 Demographic Questionnaire- basic demographic information
(age, gender, race, marital status, education level, religious
affiliation, and prior experience with Holotropic Breathwork).
 Pre session
 Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) – 20 item
questionnaire will be used to quantify the subjective mood and
affect of the participants’ prior to and post HB session
 Pre session
 Post session
 Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ). 32 item
questionnaire used to identify the number of complete mystical
experiences among the breathers.
 Post session

48. Summary
1. Mystical experiences core features:
1. Unity (internal or external)
2. Noetic quality
3. Ineffability
4. Sense of sacredness
5. Positive mood
6. Transcendence of time and space
2. Mystical experiences are measurable phenomenon
that have played a significant role in human
psychology.
3. HB can possibly induce a mystical experience in a
safe, controlled environment.

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