Psychedelic ego dissolution: Neuroscience, psychotherapy and spirituality

Professor Michiel van Elk

The Nuts and Bolts of Psychedelic Science: Neuropsychological mechanisms and methodological considerations

Abstract

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) is gaining ground as a new paradigm in mental healthcare and clinical trials currently investigate the safety and efficacy of PAP for depression, addiction and end-of-life-anxiety. However, the precise working mechanisms underlying the trans-diagnostic therapeutic effects of psychedelics remains unclear. In this talk I will discuss biochemical, neural systems and psychological mechanisms that help us to understand the therapeutic efficacy of PAP. I will also highlight recurrent methodological problems that threaten the validity of research findings, as well as ways to address these problems to improve the rigor and transparency of psychedelic science. 

Speaker Bio

Michiel obtained degrees in philosophy (MA), biological psychology (MSc) and the psychology of religion (MSc). He completed his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen (cum laude). He worked as a visiting researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara (2010), as a Marie Curie post-doctoral fellow at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland (2010-2012), as a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University (2017), as a Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Amsterdam (2019-2010) and as a researcher at the University of Amsterdam (2013-2020). Since 2020, Michiel has been affiliated as Associate Professor to the University of Leiden and supported by prestigious grants from the John Templeton Foundation, NWO and the BIAL Foundation. He supervises the Psychedelic, Religious, Self-transcendent and Mystical Experiences (PRSM) Lab (www.prsmlab.com). He has published more than 100 papers in prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Nature Human Behavior, Cortex, Scientific Reports and Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. Michiel has also published several popular science books on such different topics as the Babybrain, the Evolution of Religion, Ecstatic Experiences and Psychedelics. His work is frequently featured in popular media including The New Yorker, National Geographic and The Conversation. 

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/michiel-van-elk

https://prsmlab.com/teams/michiel-van-elk/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/michiel-van-elk-5a769210b/

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Dr Leor Roseman

Connection and Liberation as Key Therapeutic Processes in Psychedelics-Assisted Therapy (and Beyond)

Abstract

Psychedelic-assisted therapy is a therapeutic modality which relies on the transformative quality of certain experiences. In the search to define which experiences are considered therapeutic, some of the leading candidates are mystical experiences, unitive experiences, selfless states, and ego-dissolution. These are vague names loaded with much theoretical underpinning, yet they might hint at some phenomenological dynamics which are essential for the therapeutic use of psychedelics. 

In this talk, I would argue that the therapeutic value of “ego-dissolution” can be defined in terms of connection and liberation – and that these are overarching essential therapeutic qualities. Dissolving ego boundaries is related to a state of heightened feeling of connection, which potentially lingers on after the experience – freeing subjects from an alienated sense of self. And, dissolving ego boundaries can also be liberating, providing opportunities for different breakthroughs to occur. Such breakthroughs can be emotional (catharsis), cognitive (insights), interpersonal (recognition), collective (communitas), spiritual (revelations), and political (revolutions). 

The softening of the rigid sense of self and identity allows such connecting and liberatory events to take place, and they play a crucial role in the therapeutic process. 

Speaker Bio

Leor is a Senior Lecturer and Psychedelic Researcher at the University of Exeter's psychology department. He is fascinated by the ways psychedelics modify consciousness from a biopsychosocial perspective. From 2013-2023, he worked at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, under the mentorship of Prof. Robin Carhart-Harris and Prof. David Nutt, in the midst of a so-called psychedelic revolution, supporting the foundational work of a re-emerging research field.

His interdisciplinary research covers neuroscience, psychology, phenomenology, anthropology and conflict resolution, using a wide array of research methods such as fMRI, quantitative, qualitative, microphenomenology, ethnographic, and participatory research.

https://psychology.exeter.ac.uk/people/profile/index.php?web_id=leor_roseman

https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/psychedelics/?team=leor-roseman

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/leor-roseman/

Google Scholar https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=9psXUfEAAAAJ&hl=en

X @LeorRoseman

Dr James Madaio

Subjectivity and its Borders:  Transpersonal bliss and the dissolution of the I-sense in Advaita Vedānta

Abstract 

The Hindu philosophical tradition of Advaita Vedānta proposes the radical position that the awareness at the base of our subjectivity is none other than the universal or all-constituting consciousness, which is the only true reality, the ground of all ontic beings. This perspective identifies non-egological self (ātman) as pure consciousness and is sometimes contrasted with the Buddhist ‘no-self’ position, although the Advaitins deny that ‘self’ is the egoic I-sense. In this paper we will explore the Advaita Vedānta understanding of consciousness as ‘luminosity’ or pure cognizance, as well as the tradition’s analysis of the structure of individuated subjectivity. In doing so, the paper delineates how Advaita Vedānta locates what might be called ‘transpersonal’ experiences in relation to the erosion, or ‘forgetting’, of individuated subjectivity.  I argue that it is in this context where we might find analogues to the kind of unitive experiences sometimes discussed in relation to ‘ego-dissolution’. We will also explore models of meditative inwardness within Advaita Vedānta, which pursue concentrative absorption in ‘pure awareness’, which is beyond subject-object knowing. In doing so, we will pay close attention to the way in which personal identity in Advaita Vedānta can be understood as a kind of narrative construct and how accounts of a ‘universal egoity’ converge with senses of ‘mineness’ in the Western phenomenological tradition.   

Speaker Bio

Dr. James Madaio is a research fellow at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He is Editor of the Journal of Hindu Studies (Oxford University Press) and Regional Editor (Indic traditions) of Bloomsbury Academic’s Introductions to World Philosophies book series. His monograph, Advaita Vedānta and the Story of Liberation: Vidyāraṇya’s Narrative Philosophy, is under contract with Oxford University Press. He is also an editor of two forthcoming volumes: The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Non-duality in Indian Thought (co-edited with Jonathan Duquette) and Provincializing Pluralism: Difference and Diversity in South Asian Traditions (co-edited with Brian Black). He was a postdoctoral fellow at New Europe College (Bucharest), an affiliated researcher at the Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute (Chennai), and adjunct faculty at the Consciousness Studies programme at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bangalore). He was previously a lecturer at the University of Maryland (USA), University of Manchester (UK), and Charles University (Czech Republic).

https://orient.cas.cz/en/people/Dr.-James-Madaio/

https://ochs.org.uk/dr-james-madaio/

Prof. Max Velmans

Psychedelics, Advaita Vedanta and Integral Vedanta (provisional title)

(Possible replacement for Dr James Madaio)

Speaker Bio

Max Velmans is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, principally known for the theory of consciousness called "reflexive monism". 

Velmans has around 100 publications in the area of consciousness studies in which he develops this into a general theory that addresses the many problems of consciousness, including Understanding Consciousness (2000, 2009), and Towards a Deeper Understanding of Consciousness (2017, 2023 pb).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Velmans

Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IlGiWfwAAAAJ&hl=en

Reflexive Monism videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSmLGjJrqQas0pcp-KI-CgRuklGOSkh7O

Dr Matthijs Cornelissen MD

Indian/Vedanta perspectives on ego dissolution and psychedelics (provisional title)

(Possible replacement for Dr James Madaio)

Speaker Bio

Matthijs Cornelissen was born in The Netherlands and studied Medicine and Psychology in Amsterdam. He is deeply interested in the work of Sri Aurobindo, and when 27, he moved to India where he has lived ever since. In the Delhi Branch of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram he helped setting up the Institute for Integral Education, Mirambika, and at present he teaches the psychological aspects of Sri Aurobindo's work at SAICE in Pondicherry. He assisted with the publication of Sri Aurobindo's Complete Works, and wrote a few articles and book chapters on Sri Aurobindo's contributions to Consciousness Studies and Psychology. He also organised conferences, gave workshops and lectures, and edited books on the same subject. He founded and maintains the websites of the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Consciousness Studies, the Indian Psychology Institute and Infinity in a Drop.

https://ipi.org.in/homepages/homepage-matthijs.php

Researchgate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthijs-Cornelissen

Professor Luis Eduardo Luna

Amazonian Shamanism, Animal Transformation, and Animism

Abstract

A common report when people are taking psychedelics is the concept of “ego dissolution”. The person may experience losing his/her identity and being identified either with the whole of the cosmos, with planet Earth, or with a particular entity, plant or animal, or with a void. This is often described as difficult or even terrifying experiences. In the worldview of many Amerindian societies, a shaman or payé, the term I prefer to use here, is supposed to be able to transform into a jaguar or other animal to perform certain tasks, such as fighting with the person or spirit who caused the illness of a patient. It is assumed that it is possible “to change skin”, get into the body of another organism, to experience the world through that other body. During the initiation process, often assisted by ingesting mind-modifying plants, the payé needs to learn how to undergo such transformation without fear. In some instances, this process is experienced as equivalent to dying. I will present here some examples from the ethnographic literature, from my own field work, as well as from similar experiences by non-Amazonians under the effects of ayahuasca, the Quechua name of a beverage made of the vine Banisteriopsis caapi and additives. 

Speaker Bio

Luis Eduardo Luna was born in Florencia, Colombia, in 1947. He has a B.A. from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1972), an interdisciplinary Master from Oslo University (1980), and a Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Religion, Stockholm University (1989). He received a Fellowship of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, appointed for a study of the ethnobotany and ethnomedicine of the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon (1986), and the title Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, from St. Lawrence, Canton, New York (2002). He was an associate of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University (1987) and was elected Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London (1989). He was an Assistant Professor in Anthropology (1994-1998) at the Department of Anthropology of Santa Catarina Federal University (UFSC) in Florianópolis, Brazil. He retired in 2011 from the Department of Modern Language and Communication at the Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki. Besides publications in various journals, Dr. Luna is the author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (1986), a co-author with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (1991), and co-author with Slawek Wojtowicz, Rick Strassman and Ede Frecska of Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (2008). He is also a co-editor with Steven White of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine (2000, enlarged second edition 2016). Dr. Luna has lectured worldwide on indigenous and mestizo shamanism and has been a curator of visionary art exhibits in Europe, Latin America, the United States, and Japan. He is the Director of Wasiwaska, Research Center for the Study of Psychointegrator Plants, Visionary Art and Consciousness, Florianópolis, Brazil (www.wasiwaska.org). Since June 2022 he has also been an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Exeter, England.

https://www.wasiwaska.org/luis-eduardo-luna/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-eduardo-luna-70645930/

Dr Andy Letcher

Beyond Ego-Loss: The hermeneutics of psychedelic experience

Abstract

In recent years, the terms ‘ego-loss’ or ‘ego-dissolution’ have become synonymous with the psychedelic experience; indeed, for many this compromised sense of self is seen as something of an apotheosis, both the desired prophylactic endpoint of any therapeutic endeavour and the spiritual terminus of personal psychonautic experimentation. In this paper my aim is not to critique such experiences, which, despite the conundrum of how it is possible for there to be experience of ego-dissolution without a subject to have it, must remain indubitable to those who declare them. Rather, I seek to question how it was we arrived at the conclusion that what psychedelics do, or what we hope they do, is compromise the integrity of the self. For seen cross-culturally, such psychologization appears to be a peculiarly western, and so rather limited, preoccupation, one that is not shared by cultures with venerable traditions of psychedelic usage. 

I will argue that all attempts to classify, systematise and generally make sense of psychedelic experiences suffer from the same problem: that the experiences remain private until rendered public, be that via trip reports or the numerical output of administered scales. Psychedelic experiences come to us as recollection, ready-filtered and interpreted, and so may not be as transparently amenable to scrutiny as investigators assume. If I am correct, therefore, that the study of psychedelic experience is a matter of hermeneutics – that is, of interpretation – then it behoves us to ask how best we ought to do so. For if we leave untested the assumptions that undergird our interpretations, we risk further marginalising those extant and adroit psychedelic cultures to whom we are already in debt. Moreover, as the very appeal of the psychedelic experience rests upon its surfeit of meaning, I suggest it would be unwise for us to close possibilities prematurely.

Speaker Bio

Dr Andy Letcher is a scholar of religion specialising in psychedelic and ‘dark green’ spiritualities and new religious movements. He is Senior Lecturer at both Schumacher College, Devon UK – where he is the Programme Lead for the MA Engaged Ecology –, and at the University of Exeter, where he teaches on the PGCert Psychedelics: Mind, Medicine and Culture. He is the author of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (Faber & Faber, 2006), and numerous papers on psychedelics, ecology, animism and paganism.

Andy researches the contemporary use of psychedelics with a particular focus on the role psychedelics might play in our cultivating an ecological self. He is currently researching ritual and animistic usage of psychedelics by contemporary British Druids, and the contemporary use of the Fly Agaric mushroom.

He has been a guest on the Green Dreamer, Hive, Living Mirrors and Mushroom Hour podcasts, and appeared at Glastonbury, Shambhala, Green Man and Medicine festivals. A folk musician, he plays English bagpipes, low whistle, and Dark Age lyre.

https://psychology.exeter.ac.uk/people/profile/index.php?web_id=Andy_Letcher

https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/psychedelics/?team=2929-2

https://campus.dartington.org/about/staff-schumacher/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-letcher-6577a984/

X @AndyLetcher