Towards a Participatory Philosophical Religion: Foundations for a Sacramental Metaphysics of Psychedelics

Abstract

This article explores the emergence of a new philosophical religion arising from the intersection of psychedelic ministry, transpersonal psychology, and participatory metaphysics. Framed within the evolution of Western consciousness and drawing from Friedrich Schelling’s participatory metaphysics, Stanislav Grof’s findings, and Jorge Ferrer’s participatory turn, this article joins the metaphysical and spiritual conversation rising within the psychedelic ecosystem. These needs include spiritual and metaphysical integration of some psychedelic phenomena as well as metaphysical foundations for a sacramental understanding of psychedelics. Arguing that psychedelics can function sacramentally and grant participatory access to the creative ground of reality, this article proposes transpersonal ministry as a framework that can meet the spiritual and metaphysical demands of psychedelics. In dialogue with Schelling’s vision of a philosophical religion and Ferrer’s participatory pluralism, transpersonal ministry offers churches, ministers, and congregants a shared language that unites experiential participation with metaphysical inquiry to provide a non-dogmatic framework for integrating transformative states.

1. Introduction

Few moments in the history of Western consciousness and spirituality have made the relevance of the participatory vision as evident as the modern psychedelic movement. The participatory vision refers to a spiritual and metaphysical threat through the history of Western consciousness, which, as Sherman (2008) describes, “envisions a radically relational world” and aims to “reconcile the integrity of the Many with the allurement and the reality of the One” (p. 92). The modern psychedelic movement refers to the historic phenomenon that started in the 1960s psychedelic counterculture in the U.S., which strongly influenced the birth of transpersonal psychology, and is now experiencing a contemporary revival in research and therapy. This article brings the participatory theories of Friedrich Schelling and Jorge Ferrer into conversation with the modern psychedelic movement through the transpersonal psychology of Stan Grof and the grassroots rise of psychedelic ministry.

From the start, the psychedelic movement recognized the link between psychedelic-induced spiritual and metaphysical states and psychological healing and growth. As Ferrer (2002) writes, transpersonal psychology rose “from the encounter of the modern self with the sacred dimensions of life and existence” (pp. 17–18). This recognition is evident in both the works of Maslow and Grof. Ferrer (2002) notes that for Maslow, it was the “connection between psychological health and religious experience” that led him towards the “articulation of a new [transpersonal] psychology” (p. 39). Similarly, Grof’s (1975, 1980, 1985, 1998) research with LSD psychotherapy explicitly challenged the mechanistic worldview and revealed dimensions of the psyche that open directly onto the spiritual and cosmic. He coined the term holotropic to refer to powerful non-ordinary states of consciousness accessible through psychedelics and other technologies of the sacred. Additionally, he used the term transpersonal to refer to experiences that transcend personal identity and even space and time. He ultimately came to see them as ontologically significant and containing the foundations of cosmological and religious systems.

After the criminalization of psychedelics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the psychedelic movement took two turns. On the one hand, it moved into academia. On the other hand, psychedelics went underground, both recreationally and in the form of underground psychedelic guides. Not wanting to move underground, Grof followed transpersonal psychology into academia and eventually cocreated holotropic breathwork1 as an alternative tool for reaching holotropic and transpersonal states. The past few decades have witnessed a resurgence of legal psychedelic research and therapy in the United States. Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the state of psychedelics has been rapidly shifting, with many cities and a few states having decriminalized psychedelic plants and fungi. Additionally, three states have passed legislation permitting the medical use of psychedelics and offer legal pathways towards becoming facilitators.

Similar to transpersonal psychology, the psychedelic resurgence has challenged the scientific physicalistic model. Recent studies indicate that psychedelics frequently trigger metaphysical and worldview shifts away from the mainstream materialistic and physicalistic perspective (Timmermann et al. 2021; Sjöstedt-Hughes 2023; Palitsky et al. 2023; Cheung and Yaden 2024). In this context, researchers have also noted the significant correlation between PAT-induced worldview shifts and mystical experience and corresponding improvements in mental health (Ko et al. 2022). On the other hand, such drastic metaphysical shifts have been linked with existential anxiety, disorientation, and distress (Argyri et al. 2025).

Through these findings, the importance of metaphysical and spiritual integration in psychedelic healing has resurfaced (Sjöstedt-Hughes 2023; Peacock et al. 2024). While many teams and trainings invoke transpersonal psychology in this mission, there is an increasing recognition of the shortcomings of PAT teams and facilitator training programs in spiritual, religious, existential, and metaphysical matters.As a result, many training programs and PAT teams defer these concerns to chaplains (Cheung and Yaden 2024; Palitsky et al. 2025).

In this context, recent years have also seen the rise of psychedelic ministry and psychedelic churches in the United States, marking a decisive shift from a clinical approach to a religious one. These churches are distinct from North American indigenous churches and South American religious psychedelic lineages such as Santo Daime. In this article, psychedelic ministry explicitly refers to psychedelic seminaries rising within the United States2 (See Gorsline 2025).

Unlike chaplains, these ministers do not function within the medical model but hold psychedelics as sacraments that allow access to a more profound connection with the divine. This connection, they believe, leads to psychospiritual wellbeing and development (Gorsline 2025). Relying on the First Amendment, these churches bypass state laws and provide an alternative point of access for psychedelics and integration. In this context, while psychedelic ministry incorporates various psychotherapeutic modalities into its practice, it offers a spiritual and religious container that acknowledges the sacred nature of the psyche and the sacramental role of psychedelics. Lastly, while many of these churches have opted to use the term “ministry” for legal purposes, their various spiritual containers reflect the plurality of religious, secular, and metaphysical perspectives within the United States.

Within this conversation regarding psychedelics, spirituality, and metaphysics, philosophy has also been evoked. In the context of psychedelic churches in America, Steinhart (2025) emphasizes that these churches require a philosophical foundation, noting that the “legal structures that define religiosity explicitly refer to philosophical topics”, including metaphysics (p. 2). Similarly, in light of the shortcomings of the physicalistic model, Sjöstedt-Hughes (2025) offers a pantheistic metaphysical alternative.

This article joins the conversation between philosophy and psychedelic spirituality by initiating a dialogue between the participatory metaphysics of Schelling and Ferrer and the psychedelic movement through psychedelic ministry and the work of Grof. In doing so, this paper hopes to provide a sacramental participatory metaphysical view of psychedelics that can support churches, ministers, and congregants. This will be done first by presenting a historical-philosophical grounding of the psychedelic movement within the evolution of Western consciousness and spirituality. Second, by exploring a participatory metaphysical interpretation of psychedelics and psychedelic states as sacramental. Third, by bringing the resulting philosophical religion into direct conversation with the psychedelic ecosystem within the United States (psychedelic ministry and transpersonal psychology) to present the possibility of a participatory transpersonal ministry that can hold psychedelic states both academically and pragmatically.

2. History of Western Mind and the Secularization of Christianity

Although this philosophical and psychedelic spiritual movement appears to be in its infancy, it is not merely a postmodern phenomenon. Tarnas (1991) and Kelly (2010) situate the transpersonal and psychedelic movements within the larger arc of the evolution of Western consciousness and spirituality, which begins with the entanglement of ancient Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christian theology, moves through medieval and modern Europe into the New World, and culminates in the counterculture of the 1960s.

Within this historical context, Sherman (2008) identifies three lines of participatory thought: essential participation (exemplified by Plato), existential participation (exemplified by Thomas Aquinas), and a third contemporary mode he calls creative participation. This mode emphasizes human participation not only in essence (what being is) and existence (that it is), but also in creativity itself. In addition to the eighteenth-century Romantic movement and its manifestation within Schelling’s Idealist philosophy, Sherman places Ferrer’s twenty-first-century participatory turn in this third mode. While Sherman does not aim to establish a chronological lineage among the various participatory theories, it is possible to see, in their progression, the rise and secularization of Christianity. Beginning with ancient Greek essential participation, it moves to the medieval emergence of existential participation resulting from the interaction of Greek and Christian thought. It then moves through the secularization of Christianity and culminates in the creative participation to which both Schelling and Ferrer relate, granting creativity to humanity.

This reading of Sherman is aligned with Tarnas’ (2002) observation that “the great underlying drama” of the Western self is its effort to “emerge from its historical religious matrix” and to ultimately “[disengage] itself from Christianity” (p. 10). Central to this effort is the rise of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the ongoing interplay of which set the stage for modernity (Tarnas 1991). In this light, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Enlightenment marked a decisive turn away from Christianity and toward the secularized world of science. This emancipation occurred through the secularization of religious authority and a new emphasis on reason, empiricism, and mechanistic objectivity.

Central to this movement were the dualisms of René Descartes and Immanuel Kant. Descartes divided reality into subjective (mental) and objective (material) substances (Ferrer 2002). This divide freed reason and science from the Catholic church while simultaneously setting forth the mechanistic worldview that came to dominate modernity. This includes the allocation of reality to the objective world and the assumption of the secondary nature of subjectivity.

Within this legacy, Kant sought to ground the mechanistic worldview in a superior theory of knowledge by inverting the subject-object relationship. The object no longer carries the qualities that inform subjective experience; instead, the subject supplies the pre-given categories that structure knowledge of the objective world. In this context, reality as it stands, or the numinous thing-in-itself, lies beyond these categories and is unknowable. With this move, as Kelly (2008) notes, Kant “establishes the radically participatory nature of the human subject in the process of knowing” while simultaneously introducing a new gulf between the phenomenal world of experience and the noumenal realm of the thing-in-itself (p. 117).

That these men understood their work within a spiritual and religious context, and found it in line with and as supporting an ensouled reality, has long since been forgotten (Tarnas 1991). Stripped from its living context, their legacy became the metaphysical foundation of modern science. The triumph of the mechanistic worldview eventually led to the colonization of the humanities by the natural sciences, extending Descartes’ and Kant’s dualities into philosophy, psychology, and psychiatry (Grof 1985). As a result, spirituality came to be understood “in terms of … individual inner experiences which are … epistemically empty, or not providing any form of valid knowledge” (Ferrer 2002, p. 38).

The scientific movement, however, has not completely shed the Christian legacy from which it evolved. In Science and the Modern World, Alfred North Whitehead ([1925] 1967) explores how Christianity has influenced the scientific movement, showing that modern science draws from the underlying metaphysical view rooted in medieval Christianity. In this way, Christian dogma was abandoned, yet its underlying metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the world persist.

While the implicit echoes of Christian sentiments run through the academic halls that carry Enlightenment sensibility, the nineteenth-century Romantic movement’s revolt against the Enlightenment more explicitly carries spiritual sentiments. In its response to the Enlightenment’s “apotheosis of logic and reason”, the Romantic movement ultimately “affirmed the participatory role of imagination and feeling, intuition and inspiration, volition and spiritual insight, in the elaboration of human knowledge” (Ferrer and Sherman 2008, p. 37). Within this context, the German Idealists sought to bridge the widening gulf left at the heart of Kant’s epistemology by integrating the Romantic affirmation of the sacredness of nature, imagination, and human subjectivity. By bridging Romantic sacrality with Enlightenment rationality, they eliminated the Kantian-Cartesian gulf while simultaneously preserving the participatory character of knowledge (Kelly 2008).

The Idealist philosopher Fredrick Schelling, drawing from Goethe’s Romantic participatory organic vision, came to view the subject and object as moments of a single, living process (Schelling [1803] 1988). Essentially, the object and its idea within the subject are the same, and it is only with rational reflection that there is a separation. In this way, he eliminates the separation between the subject and the thing-in-itself. Knowledge of the object, then, becomes possible because of this original union of object and subject. In this way, Schelling, who most notably carried the Romantic sentiment into philosophy (Richards 2004), brought the “metaphysics of participation in creativity to one of its loftiest articulations yet” (Sherman 2008, p. 99).

As Kelly (2008) observes, Schelling’s participatory synthesis was “eventually eclipsed by the main currents of nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectual history” (p. 117). This eclipse allowed Descartes’ and Kant’s dualisms to continue fueling the mechanistic paradigm of modernity. However, even as the Enlightenment rationalism dominated Western mainstream thought, the participatory impulse of Romanticism and Idealism survived in the countercultural stream (Kelly 2010). As such, in addition to the secularized continuation of Christian sentiments within mainstream scientific thought, the Romantic spirits continued to evolve beneath the surface, carrying forward a sense of sacrality that would nourish the Western spirit for centuries to come.

3. Transpersonal Perennialism and Ferrer’s Participatory Turn

As Ferrer (2017) has noted, modernity and post-modernity rise from the Enlightenment’s “secularization of traditional religious authority” and Romanticism’s “re-sacralization of self, nature, and the cosmos” (p. 235). Inheriting the tension between secularization and sacralization, the psychedelic movement emerged in the mid-twentieth century. In the late 1960s, transpersonal psychology rose from the convergence of the emerging psychedelic movement, Western psychology, esotericism, and Eastern spirituality and philosophy (Tarnas 1991; Ferrer 2002; Sherman 2008). In addition to drawing from the ideas of prominent thinkers such as William James, Frederick Myers, and Carl Jung, amongst others, transpersonal psychology sprout from the collaboration of Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, and others, emerging as the fourth force in psychology: evolving from behaviorism and psychoanalysis, advancing through the humanistic movement, and ultimately shifting toward the transpersonal (Ferrer 2002).

From the beginning, Grof was unable to integrate his work with LSD psychotherapy into the modern mechanistic worldview. In this context, Grof (1985) argues that holotropic experiences demonstrate that human consciousness transcends the brain. Grof’s early work (Grof 1975) focuses on mapping the psyche. He proposes a new psychological model of the human being that both confirms and expands upon previous depth psychological models. Confirming both Freud’s and Jung’s works, Grof’s (1975, 1985, 1988) cartography of the unconscious identifies biographical (or personal) and transpersonal experiential layers of the psyche. Whereas the biographical contains individual memories, the transpersonal moves beyond personal experience and even beyond the bounds of time and space . Moving past both Jung and Freud, Grof identified the perinatal layer as containing experiential memories of the individual’s own birth. He soon recognized, however, that access to these memories includes not only personal content but also archetypal, mythic, and other transpersonal ones. Ultimately, he identifies the perinatal as the transition point between the transpersonal and the personal, the cosmic and the individual: both structurally and as an archetypal process.

By expanding the scope of psychology to encompass mystical, metaphysical, and spiritual dimensions, transpersonal psychology represents a significant departure from contemporary psychological practices. It has since evolved into a unique field, a theoretical approach, and a paradigmatic shift in metaphysical worldview (Tarnas 2002). In an attempt to move beyond the mechanistic model of science and the psyche, transpersonal psychology and Grof embraced perennial philosophy. Perennialism is the idea that different religious traditions all point to a single, universal ground framed as a monistic Absolute Consciousness beyond all forms (Ferrer 2002). In The Cosmic Game, Grof (1998) articulates a comprehensive metaphysical and cosmological interpretation. He emphasizes the experiential rather than symbolic nature of mythic and archetypal experiences, making it clear that his patients are experiencing myths and archetypes with all their senses, including wonder and horror. However, he notes that while archetypal and mythic experiences evoke awe and wonder, they do not necessarily lead to spiritual fulfillment. He identifies two experiences that satisfy spiritual longing: the Cosmic Void and Absolute Consciousness, which he describes as two aspects of the Absolute or the Cosmic Creative Principle. Grof (1998) affirms the Cosmic Creative Principle as the universal ground of perennialism, towards which all strive. For him, the central spiritual task is to see through the illusion of separateness and awaken to oneness with this principle.

As transpersonal psychology moved beyond its initial formulations, it began to question its core allegiance to perennialism. Ferrer (2002) followed Heron and Tarnas into participatory thought. Ferrer (2002) and Tarnas (2002) demonstrate that through its allegiance with perennialism, transpersonal theory inadvertently upholds the legacies of Descartes and Kant. Ferrer (2002) criticizes transpersonal psychology’s perennial acceptance of a pregiven spiritual reality, as well as its tendency to marginalize transpersonal and spiritual phenomena as individual and subjective inner experiences. Seeking to unify epistemic, ontological, and spiritual inquiry, Ferrer (2002, 2008) proposes a participatory alternative that transcends the subject–object split and the assumption of a pregiven universal ultimate. He redefines transpersonal experiences as transformative events cocreated between humans and “the Mystery”, as the undeterminate3 creative source of reality. The experiential component of transpersonal phenomena, then, involves the participation of individual consciousness within these creative events.

Additionally, he moves beyond the Kantian divide between a pregiven numinous realm and human knowledge of it by refusing to conceive of the Mystery as “having objectifiable pregiven attributes” (Ferrer 2017, p. 17). He argues that a pregiven ultimate reality does not exist, and that instead, the co-creative enaction of different spiritual ultimates takes place through participation in the Mystery. As he says, “spiritual pluralism does not exist only at a doctrinal level, but at an ontological or metaphysical one” (pp. 148–49). In this way, Ferrer (2008) affirms an ontologically rich and generative metaphysical and spiritual reality where the various religious worlds emerge through co-creative participation.

Ferrer (2008) considers his participatory turn to be more inclusive of transpersonal and spiritual phenomena than perennialism due to its recognition of “the immeasurable creativity of the Mystery” and its highlighting of the importance of the “actual generativity of spiritual unfolding” (p. 158). This perspective allows for a more diverse and flexible understanding of spirituality, one that embraces continuous creative expression and evolution. In this vision, the universal, rather than found within a global spiritual system like in perennialism, is accessible within “the shared lived experience of communion with the generative dimension of the mystery” (Ferrer 2017, pp. 239–40); a process through which the Mystery as the One creatively unfolds within the Many.

As the previous section demonstrated, Ferrer’s participatory turn, while emerging within transpersonal theory, is part of a broader philosophical vision that emphasizes creative participation with existence and includes Romanticism and Schelling’s Idealism (Sherman 2008). Let us now turn to Schelling, whose life and work were both central to and expanded beyond German Romanticism and Idealism (Snow 1996).

4. Schelling’s Participatory Vision

Scholars of German Idealism have offered various interpretations of Schelling’s body of work. Those attempting to identify his central system often experience frustration due to what appears to be internal shifts and contradictions in his philosophical trajectory (McGrath 2012). One significant source of this frustration is his explicit refusal to establish a definitive system. For Schelling, philosophy is an artistic creation, and treating any single system as universal would be to confuse the philosopher’s creation with the living truth itself (Schelling [1815] 2000). As such, his work never culminates in a complete system. Schelling has traditionally been positioned as a bridge within Idealism, linking Fichte and Hegel (McGrath 2012). Recent scholarship, however, has begun to reveal a deeper consistency within Schelling’s philosophical trajectory, and the significance of his work is being re-explored (Snow 1996; McGrath 2012; Segall 2014).

For our purposes, the trajectory of Schelling’s work presents two relevant recurring themes: (1) the divine potencies as generative principles active in both nature and spirit, and (2) an underlying emphasis on the participatory nature of these creative potencies. Throughout his philosophical journey, Schelling drew from two distinct modes of inquiry, which he came to categorize as negative philosophy and positive philosophy. Negative philosophy, for Schelling ([1842] 2007b), investigates the essence of Being a priori, meaning through logic and pure reason. He associates this type of philosophy with the lesser Greek mysteries. As he argues, however, negative philosophy, on its own, is incomplete and requires a complementary approach, namely, positive philosophy.

Unlike negative philosophy, which relies on reason and logic, positive philosophy attends to the existence of Being as it reveals itself a posteriori, or after the fact, through life and experience. Where negative philosophy belongs in academia, the positive philosophy is associated with life itself and akin to the greater Greek mysteries. Positive philosophy, however, is not mere empiricism. It only proceeds towards experience after beginning with that which comes before both experience and thought: existence itself. Within a complete philosophy, negative philosophy understands itself in relation to positive philosophy. Philosophy, then, is only complete when it contains both types of philosophical inquiry. These two forms of philosophy have continued to evolve within Western consciousness such that “the entire history of philosophy … presents a struggle between the negative and the positive philosophies4” (p. 191).

In this context, Schelling ([1842] 2007b) identifies his early philosophical work as negative philosophy. This includes Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (Schelling [1803] 1988), where he distinguishes between two forms of nature: the visible world of objects and the generative process that produces those objects. It is in this context that he first introduces the idea of the potencies as the creative generative process driving the development and evolution of nature as a living organic being. This evolution begins with the unconscious Spirit latent within nature and culminates in the conscious Spirit as expressed through human beings. Through this developmental arc, nature awakens to itself.

In his middle works, particularly The Ages of the World (Schelling [1815] 2000), he interprets the potencies as a triadic process within the divine itself. In this schema, God emerges from the ineffable Godhead, and humanity in turn emerges from God. In his later lectures on Mythology and Revelation, Schelling’s ([1842] 2007a, [1841–1842] 2020) exploration of the participatory nature of the potencies reaches its culmination. Through a positive philosophical lens, Schelling ([1841–1842] 2020) looks to affirm the divinity of existence, stating that “what is proven in the positive philosophy is not the existence of God but rather the godhood of that which has existence” (p. 121).

Here, the potencies reappear as the forces through which divine creativity unfolds within and through human history. Mythology symbolizes humanity’s unconscious and pre-historical participation in divine creativity, whereas revelation marks the emergence of this participation into conscious awareness (Schelling [1842] 2007a). Through this transition from mythology to revelation, humanity comes to know the Godhead as a being who reveals its personality through historical time. In this way, the same creative movement that begins as unconscious nature, i.e., the potencies, evolves into unconscious human participation in mythology, and ultimately matures into conscious participation in revelation.

In his lectures on Revelation, Schelling ([1841–1842] 2020) describes the Godhead as the unity in which the three potencies are held together as the All-One and expressed as divine personality. Christ, then, is not merely a historical figure, but the incarnation of the third potency as a cosmic principle whose becoming human unfolds across both mythology and revelation (Schelling [1842] 2007a). In this way, the Christian revelation is not Christ’s teachings but his crucifixion and resurrection. Through this process, the Godhead, as the totality of the triune God, reveals itself as personality in history.

At the same time, Schelling ([1841–1842] 2020) calls for the continued secularization of Christianity. He views Christianity as the vessel of a universal process, writing that “the process that repeats itself [in Christianity] … is the universal, the absolute process” (Schelling [1842] 2007a, p. 151). For Schelling, “it could only be the last product and the highest expression of the philosophy that would be in the position to make comprehensible … a real … relation of the human consciousness to God” (p. 174). Philosophy’s task, then, is to make this process intelligible and to articulate a philosophical religion whose object is the personal and participatory living God.

Shelling does not describe philosophical religion except to say that it has the creative process as its object of study. As such, he only arrived at the “doorstep of the possibility” of such a philosophical religion (Wirth [1815] 2007, p. xii). Such a philosophical religion, rooted in Schelling’s positive philosophy, would extend beyond academia into life itself. Thus, it becomes the living philosophy of the Godhead as the All-One that unites the potencies. Schelling’s anticipation of a philosophical religion presupposes the secularization of Christianity. In keeping with this, it is within the postmodern secular call for the integration of psychedelic-induced spiritual and metaphysical states that we envision the emergence of a participatory and sacramental philosophical religion. In Section 6, we will return to a re-envisioning of Schelling’s concept of a philosophical religion in the context of psychedelic sacraments. Let us first turn to a general synthesis of the participatory and transpersonal thoughts explored so far.

5. A Participatory Transpersonal Conversation

Both Schelling and Ferrer insist on the participatory nature of the relationship between humanity and the cosmic creative process. As Sherman (2008) points out, “Schelling sees everything, human and nature alike, as alive and creative through their relationship to a living, creative divinity” (p. 100). Similarly, Ferrer (2017) sees human beings as a nexus and a potential channel for the creative unfolding of the Mystery’s ontological urges. As such, he writes, “whether they know it or not”, human beings are always “participating in the self-disclosure of Spirit by virtue of their very existence” (Ferrer 2002, p. 130). Additionally, Schelling’s treatment of philosophy as art and his negation of the possibility of a universal system of philosophy deeply anticipates Ferrer’s critique of the universal Absolute as understood by perennialism. Like Schelling’s negative philosophy, perennialism is “an a priori philosophical stance” (Ferrer 2002, p. 101) relying on the “rigid universalism of rational consciousness” (Ferrer 2008, p. 157). Ferrer’s participatory turn, on the other hand, begins with the One as the Mystery. It only then moves towards the Many through co-creative plurality. As such, it can be interpreted as a type of positive philosophy which, as Wirth ([1815] 2007) describes, “descends from one to the factual lives of the many” and “disperses, multiplies, fragments, and becomes many” (p. x).

Lastly, Schelling’s concept of a positive philosophy, which belongs to life, begins as a call within the negative philosophy of academia. In a similar move, Ferrer’s participatory turn, which challenged the prevailing perennial philosophy, came as a call within the rational domains of academia. Yet, it is a spiritual orientation for life (Ferrer 2017). In this context, it is possible to understand the participatory turn as a positive philosophy aiming to make comprehensible a posteriori what was previously incomprehensible a priori: the living Godhead as the Mystery.

We can better understand this through the integration of Grof’s work. As seen, for Schelling ([1842] 2007b), within the mythological process, the collective consciousness of a people is born from the unconscious. This birth occurs through the potencies, which represent the divine creative process and through which creation and consciousness emerge. Through cocreation with humanity, the potencies lead to the unconscious creation of mythological gods and come into consciousness through revelation. Likewise, in the perinatal process, Grof discovered the birth of individual consciousness from the unconscious and found that this process contains personal, mythic, archetypal, and other transpersonal content (Grof 1985, 1998, 2019a, 2019b). Within this context, Schelling ([1842] 2007a) interprets the potencies as “supra-historical” (p. 128). Similarly, Grof (1998) suggests that individual and collective engagement with the perinatal process shapes history. As Grof sees it, humanity as a whole mostly fails to emotionally and spiritually integrate the crucial event of individual birth. Consequently, unresolved perinatal energies are unconsciously expressed and continue to influence personal and collective events.

Through a Schellingian interpretation of Grof’s work, it is possible to understand perinatal states as providing access to the co-creative process that gives birth to collective and individual consciousness, as well as spiritual and transpersonal realities: the potencies themselves. Holotropic states, then, not only allow access to psychic content and processes but also provide participatory access to the underlying forces of nature and creation. From this standpoint, through the perinatal, the potencies enter history. While Grof himself does not explicitly make a connection between the perinatal and creation, Kelly can be seen as taking on this task. Joining Tarnas (1991), Kelly (2021) brings Grof’s work into conversation with the work of Schelling’s contemporary, Hegel. Here, he coins the term metanatal to refer to this underlying cosmic process of creation, which manifests through the perinatal process as both personal and transpersonal enactment, and which presents within history through participatory cocreation with human spirituality.

Within this context, Ferrer (2002) understands that spiritual forms already cocreated are more easily accessible across the collective psyche. While perennialism has traditionally presented access to these worlds as reaching the structures of reality, a participatory reinterpretation views them as re-engagement with previously cocreated realities. As such, even without a universal spiritual ultimate, Ferrer (2008) acknowledges that “the presence of the past may impose quasi-transcendental pragmatic restrictions” on spiritual inquiry (p. 142). On the other hand, drawing from Lahood, Ferrer (2017) understands that new spiritual realities can be cocreated with the Mystery and through the hybridization of various already existing religious realities. This can be seen as both participation with the Mystery and cocreation with its products (Ferrer 2017).

As we saw, for Schelling, philosophy is only complete when it embraces both positive and negative inquiry. This concept applies to transpersonal philosophy as well. Contact with mythological and archetypal realities, in holotropic states, can then be understood in both perennialist and participatory terms. From this perspective, perennialism, like negative philosophy, reveals the long history of the gods as they have evolved (a posteriori). On the other hand, participatory theory, as a positive philosophy, looks at active engagement with the creative Mystery itself. A Schellingian interpretation of the metanatal, then, would see it not only as comprehensible through the abstractions of negative philosophy, but would insist on its living reality as the Godhead or the Mystery. To better understand this, it is essential to remember that while Grof speaks of the perinatal in terms of individual birth, his findings come from adults in holotropic states. A positive and participatory interpretation explores the unique perinatal event of the individual. It points to the living process with which the individual participates, and which unfolds within the holotropic event. Furthermore, it is not any single moment of that holotropic event, but the fundamental creative power it involves. It is this process that Schelling and Ferrer look to in their search for a living Godhead or Mystery.

6. Re-Envisioning Schelling’s Philosophical Religion

Drawing from both Romantic and Enlightenment legacies, Schelling’s philosophy was shaped by his Christian upbringing and by the academic climate of his time, which included hostility towards atheistic sentiments. In this context, his creative solution to the secularization of Christianity is an attempt at distilling its metaphysical essence while leaving behind its dogmatic form. For Schelling ([1841–1842] 2020), the core principle of Christianity is the revelation of the participatory relationship with the underlying creative power of the Godhead. It is within this context that Schelling anticipated the further secularization of Christianity in an attempt to universalize this core creative principle. Here, secularization becomes the very means through which the Mystery at the roots of Christianity emerges into conscious awareness. This emergence occurs not through the shared symbolism of the Christian collective unconscious but rather through the unique expressions of individual psyches reuniting with wholeness during spiritual events.

Schelling argues that a true concept of religion is accessible only through positive philosophy (Wirth [1815] 2007). As a subset of positive philosophy, philosophical religion has as its object the Godhead as divine existence. A reading of Schelling through Ferrer further frees him from Christianity and situates him within a secular participatory religiosity he anticipated. Here, Ferrer’s post-secular view helps us interpret Schelling’s Godhead not as a perennial transpersonal ultimate but as the participatory Mystery through which different ultimates emerge via cocreation. In this context, Schelling’s discussion of mythology expresses the participatory nature of the potencies involved in the enactment of different systems of gods or spiritual ultimates. Revelation, then, explores the participatory process through which the underlying creative power, or Mystery, emerges into consciousness. Through Ferrer, Schelling ([1842] 2007b) can be understood as describing the journey of a particular spiritual lineage in which the participatory relationship with the Mystery itself has come into consciousness: “the entrance to whom is first opened by [Christ]5” (p. 148). In this light, psychedelics are not merely therapeutic tools but sacraments that open participatory access to the forces of nature and creation. Not because they provide access to Christ or the Christian God, but because they provide access to that divine existence in which all spirituality participates, including Christianity.

7. Transpersonal Ministry as a Participatory Philosophical Religion

In the context of psychedelic research and therapy within the United States, PAT teams, grounded within the modern physicalistic worldview and aligning with state laws, often do not account for the metaphysical or spiritual dimensions of psychedelic experiences. Those who do seek to incorporate spiritual and metaphysical integration either draw from transpersonal psychology or look to chaplains for spiritual integration (Palitsky et al. 2025). Outside of medicine and research, religion offers the only alternative legal container for psychedelic facilitation and support.

Within this landscape, psychedelic ministry provides both transpersonal psychology and the psychedelic movement with a ministerial container that prioritizes metaphysical, spiritual, and transpersonal realities. Yet, as a grassroots religious movement, psychedelic ministry does not yet meet Sjöstedt-Hughes’s (2023) call for a philosophically and metaphysically oriented integration process. Conversely, transpersonal theory, while offering adequate metaphysical grounding, cannot provide the embodied, experiential container that these states demand.

This article suggests that initiating a dialogue between psychedelic ministry and the participatory philosophical religion outlined above potentiates the emergence of a transpersonal ministry. Rooted in the broader history of Western consciousness and spirituality, and emerging at the intersection of transpersonal psychology and psychedelic ministry, transpersonal ministry can support the spiritual and philosophical needs of the psychedelic movement within a sacramental philosophical framework. Both integrating and transcending academia, it re-envisions Schelling’s call for a philosophical religion through a sacramental, participatory vision that he could not have anticipated. Like with psychedelic ministry, what is emerging is not a simple return to traditional religion, but the co-creative birth of something new.

While related to psychedelic ministry, this new discipline is distinct in its metaphysical scope and philosophical grounding and offers participatory metaphysical support for a sacramental reinterpretation of psychedelic exploration. Ultimately, transpersonal ministry positions human evolution and spirituality as processes that belong to the living, ensouled cosmos itself. At its heart, it shares Ferrer’s conviction that humanity’s spiritual unity resides in the “shared lived experience of communion with the generative dimension of the mystery” (Ferrer 2017, pp. 239–40). Fundamentally, this collective experience of communion is what transpersonal ministry aims to explore, both philosophically and sacramentally. This philosophical religion ultimately gestures toward a future in which, as Ferrer (2008) notes, the unity of the Mystery is celebrated through the infinite differentiation of its living expressions, enabling individuals to reclaim their creative role in the self-disclosure of the Mystery.

As a participatory philosophical framework, transpersonal ministry must encompass both positive and negative elements, combining academic rigor (metaphysical, spiritual, historical, transpersonal, etc.) with experiential and participatory inquiry. While emerging from academia, it relies on existential explorations from holotropic states rather than a priori conceptions about reality. It is only after beginning with existence (in this particular case, through holotropic states) that it turns to negative philosophy for further exploration and inquiry. It is from here that it can offer a participatory language that can help congregants who could benefit from secular metaphysics. Not a secularity that attempts to move beyond Christianity by distancing itself from it, but one that aims to move through Christianity by recognizing its relationship to it.

Such a framework offers ministers and congregants a secular philosophical container for psychedelic events, with the potential to support, integrate, and transcend transpersonal psychology, PAT, participatory metaphysics, psychedelic ministry, and psychedelic chaplaincy. As a ministry, this container allows for a metaphysical understanding of the cosmos to enter into spiritual and psychedelic practice. In this context, psychedelics can function as sacraments that allow access to the underlying creative power of the cosmos and its plurality of cocreated worlds. Such a container integrates psychology and medicine, while also expanding beyond them into philosophy and religion.

Moreover, transpersonal ministry can incorporate the communal aspects of spiritual and psychological healing. By situating psychedelics within a shared social context, it can help alleviate existential dread by providing a social container that integrates various metaphysical perspectives. Grounded in participatory transpersonal theory, it is potentially inclusive of all faiths and ritual forms, providing congregants with a secular yet sacred container where any spiritual experience is valid. This component could help with the isolation and existential distress and other related social harms that are sometimes reported with psychedelic-induced metaphysical shifts (Argyri et al. 2025; Evans et al. 2025).

Transpersonal ministry, as outlined here, unites metaphysical depth with embodied practice, offering a sacramental, participatory, and communal container for psychedelics. By bridging the divide between philosophy and ministry, it opens a path toward a future in which psychedelic work is grounded not only in science or spirituality alone but in a living metaphysics that affirms the sacred creativity of the cosmos itself.

8. Conclusions

As a way of addressing the spiritual and metaphysical demands of the psychedelic movement, this paper explored how the intersection of psychedelic ministry, transpersonal psychology, and participatory philosophy can address the deep spiritual and metaphysical needs emerging from the contemporary psychedelic movement. Notably, this conversation sheds light on the origins of the psychedelic movement within the Western lineage. Essentially, it presents the psychedelic movement, including the earlier emergence of transpersonal psychology and the contemporary rise of psychedelic ministry, not as isolated phenomena but as part of a deeper psychological, philosophical, and religious process rooted in the evolution of Western consciousness.

Bringing Grof’s cartography of the psyche, Ferrer’s participatory spiritual pluralism, and Schelling’s metaphysics into dialogue with psychedelic ministry, this article argues for the emergence of transpersonal ministry as a participatory philosophical religion. As a philosophical religion, transpersonal ministry situates psychedelics as sacraments, provides metaphysical grounding for psychedelic ministries, and offers a non-dogmatic, pluralistic container for integrating transformative experiences. As both a philosophy and a ministry, it serves churches, ministers, and congregants by providing a coherent philosophical and metaphysical foundation for understanding psychedelic sacraments.

For churches, it offers language and structure to articulate their practices within a broader historical, philosophical, spiritual, and theological context, which they can potentially use for legal status. For ministers, it offers tools to support integration and ongoing spiritual guidance, enabling them to frame psychedelic experiences not merely as therapeutic interventions but as participatory encounters with the creative Mystery at the heart of existence. For congregants, it provides a sacred container that validates their experiences and fosters belonging. It also situates their healing within a supportive community, something that the clinical model often lacks and which can cause existential distress (Argyri et al. 2025; Evans et al. 2025).

Further conversation around what a transpersonal ministry might look like in training and practice is welcome, including dialogue between psychedelic ministry and transpersonal ministry. Additionally, there is a need for further exploration of these two forms of ministry in terms of a working definition of “religion”, both legally and philosophically. Future research would also benefit from comparative studies of different ministry models, cross-cultural dialogues that bring Western participatory metaphysics into conversation with Indigenous and Eastern perspectives, and explorations of how positive and negative philosophies might inform evolving notions of spiritual care. Further work is also needed to explore the practical implications of psychedelic ministry and perhaps transpersonal ministry in real-world settings, including how they can inform training, ethical guidelines, harm reduction, and best practices for facilitation and integration.