Psychedelics and Mysticism

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course examines the role of psychedelics and mystical experiences in religious traditions, primarily in Hindu and Buddhist traditions in the discipline of comparative mysticism. Of mystical experiences, we will touch upon ego-dissolution, visions, auditions, bliss, ineffability, perception of time, and others. Within ego-dissolution, we will examine theories of the self, also called the I or ego. The reading of classical texts like the Upaniṣads, Satipaṭhānasutta, etc., will be followed by the phenomenal experiences and noetic accounts of popular, contemporary mystics. For instance, we will read the experiences of Rāmakrishna (1836-1886), Ramaṇa Maharshi (1879-1950), Sadhguru (1957-Present), etc., along with the experiences of psychedelic users to examine the popular debate in comparative mysticism between Walter T. Stace’s essentialist model and Steven F. Katz’s contextualist model. The analyses of these experiences will be accompanied by leading cognitive neuroscientific, clinical psychological, and evolutionary approaches. In addition to the psychedelic era during the 1950’s-1960’s in the United States, we will also study cutting edge research on meditation and psychedelic interventions that use psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, mescaline, etc., performed by labs like Johns Hopkins and others.