Sciencing the mystical: the trickery of the psychedelic trip report
New Writing April 9, 2019 Tehseen Noorani 3 citations
Psychedelic researchers have begun using laboratory settings to reliably induce 'mystical experiences' quantified along dimensions like unity and transcendence. Drawing on ethnographic data and Walter Benjamin's concept of the threshold, this analysis identifies apophatic narratives of trickery that contrast with the positive knowledge typical of scientific accounts. Reading psychedelic trip reports as apophatic labor reveals that the significance of mystical encounters lies not in their transformative efficacy but in the doubts, contradictions, and aporias involved in writing out those experiences.