Sciencing the mystical: the trickery of the psychedelic trip report
New Writing April 9, 2019 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1080/14790726.2019.1566375 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Psychedelic scientists now reliably induce 'mystical experiences' in the lab, measuring them along dimensions like unity and ineffability. Drawing on ethnographic data and Walter Benjamin's concept of the threshold, this analysis argues that the true significance of these experiences lies not in their transformative efficacy but in the doubts, contradictions, and aporias participants express when writing about them. These apophatic narratives of trickery contrast with the positive knowledge usually emphasized in psychedelic science.
Study at a glance
| Design | ethnography |
|---|---|
| Key finding | The significance of mystical experiences in psychedelic science lies in the doubts and contradictions in participants' accounts, not in their point-like efficacy. |
Abstract
ABSTRACT Science has caught wind of mysticism once again. Operationalising metrics from the writings of perennial philosophers, psychopharmacologists are using psychedelics in a laboratory context to reliably induce ‘mystical experiences’. These experiences are scored along such dimensions as unity, noesis, transcendence of space–time and ineffability. How are we to read this moment? I draw on data from an ethnography of psychedelic science and take cue from Walter Benjamin's treatment of the threshold in Convolute O of The Arcades Project, to identify apophatic narratives of trickery that contrast with the positive knowledge prominent in the sciencing of the mystical experience. Read as apophatic labour, psychedelic trip reports reveal how the significance of the mystical encounter lies not in its point-like efficacy in transforming the subject, but in precisely the doubts, contradictions and aporias involved in the writing out of their experiences.