Historically, psychopharmaceutical agents have been used to produce a mystical state with the religious connotation of "a union with Divine Nature" or of "oneness with God." Such transcendental states are also known to occur in starvation, self-flagellation, Yoga and various psychoses.A common psychological origin is suggested for these states, in which there is a psychic regression to an early phase of development. This genetically is the phase wherein the infant is still united with the mother and has not yet established the boundaries between the "self" and the "not-self." In a subtler form, the desire to regress to this phase may be a universal yearning which affects the physician, the investigator and even the manufacturer of drugs. Accordingly, we have a profusion of tranquilizers, euphoriants and ataractics the prescription or the investigation of which may give vicarious pleasure and relief of tension to the physician and scientist by a process of identification with the person receiving the drug.Mankind's quest for psychic development is difficult and precarious, alternately marked by progression and regression. Excesses in the use of drugs are indicated as regressive in nature. (+info)
Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later.
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Autobiographical accounts of acute mystical experience and schizophrenia are compared in order to examine the similarities between the two states. The appearance of a powerful sense of noesis, heightening of perception, feelings of communion with the "divine," and exultation may be common to both. The disruption of thought seen in the acute psychoses is not a component of the accounts of mystical experience reviewed by the author, and auditory hallucinations are less common than visual hallucinations in the mystical state. The ease with which elements of the acute mystical experience can be induced in possession cults or in an experimental situation suggests that the capacity for such an altered state experience may be latently present in many people. It is postulated that there is a limited repertoire of response within the nervous system for altered state experiences such as acute psychosis and mystical experience, even though the precipitants and etiology may be quite different. (+info)
Biogenesis: number mysticism in protein thinking.
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Historically, great minds have been tantalized by the idea that integers contain hidden, subtle meanings that could give us deep insights into natural (and supernatural) phenomena. Numerological analysis has been used in religion, mythology, and the sciences. In the field of proteins, integers played a stimulating role during early struggles to unravel structure, but they ultimately proved constrictive and misleading. In contrast, the introduction of imaginary (or complex) numbers into the algebra and numerical analysis of ligand-protein affinities can open new perspectives into such interactions. (+info)
Exorcism: a psychiatric viewpoint.
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Doctors, for several reasons, should be concerned with exorcism is the view of Professor Trethowan, who in this paper, looks at the main features of exorcism as practised in the middle ages and now appearing in the modern world, as was seen in the recent Ossett case in Britain. He examines in some detail the nature of supposed demoniacal possession and describes its symptoms and signs. He also touches on the social, as opposed to the religious, background in which demoniacal possession flourished (not lacking in the world today), so leading to an examination of the psychodynamic aspects of demoniacal possession and the question of absolute evil. Finally he compares the techniques of exorcism and of modern psychiatric practice. (+info)