Bridging the Neural and the Numinous
Inquiry@Queen's Undergraduate Research Conference Proceedings September 2, 2025 Emma Gephart
Psychedelics, once central to countercultural spirituality, have been rebranded in Silicon Valley as tools for optimization, productivity, and cognitive control. This analysis examines how tech elites reconfigure psychedelic practice under the influence of TESCREAL—an ideological bundle of Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. Drawing on discourse analysis of media coverage, cultural texts, and case studies including Bryan Johnson’s Project Blueprint, Michael Pollan’s reframing of psychedelics as medicine, Elon Musk’s advocacy, and Mindstate Design Labs, the study introduces the term post-mysticality to describe the standardization of mystical experiences into predictable protocols for capitalist utility. Psychedelics become folded into a larger TESCREAL project of technological transcendence, where the unknown is treated as a problem to be solved rather than a mystery to be encountered.