Allowing Similarities: Using Aldous Huxley’s Views on Mystical Experience to Assess the Import of Profound Unitive Experiences Occasioned by Psychedelic Substances

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please find my comments in the Word document attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer, first of all I appreciated your general support for the article and your close review.  I should imagine it was a bit difficult to see where I was going at first, since the publisher didn't publish my abstract of the paper but instead used the paper's first paragraph as the "abstract."  That aside, let me address your concerns:

You: "The content of the paper is presented as confirming the author's opinion in several parts of the text. For example:" and here you cite places on p.4 and elsewhere when I've added such personal comments as "to my mind beyond question" and "as do I."  

Response: I've cut those personal opinions and emphasized Huxley's own, adding with regards to the examples of unitive type experiences that they arguably exists, rather than that they undeniably exist.

You: The constructivist argument that experiences “goes hand in hand” with interpretation is a pretty good counterargument for this, if by UME you mean a somewhat pure experience. “The primary distillation of these many criticisms for the present essay is that there is no settled opinion preventing the recognition of similarities across cultures, including within the discipline of comparative mysticism. The individual traditions certainly have differences, but they are not each siloed or sui generis, i.e., so unique and alien from each other that similarities can not be identified.” p5 

Response: I do not mean a "pure experience" in that Huxley didn't believe there is such a thing as unmediated experience, as I explained in a footnote.  He simply argued that even mediated experiences can have similarities.

You: "p. 7. It is also important to examine what could serve as a counterargument. The fact that there is much evidence for it is not necessarily enough to prove a point. “I think it is bountifully clear that they are.” 

Response: (Please note that some of your comments are appearing on a page earlier of the document the publisher has sent to me.) I've added an addenda to my comment to explain why I think the point is clear, so the line now reads: "I think it is bountifully clear that they are, at least if we can trust the published reports from the field of psychedelic studies." I'm not saying that UMEs are the only experiences that occur.  I go on to give good evidence that such experiences are reported in the literature.

You: "Picking quotes and works that support the argumentation: Houston Smith quote (p.8),"

Response: Actually, my point for using the quote from Huston Smith was not support anyone's belief that psychedelics can occasion genuine mystical experiences but rather to say that even if they did, it's not a settled matter that UMEs lead to improved lives.

You: "While Staal did advocate for an open-mindedness of scholars, possibly supported by personal experiences, the emphasis on psychedelics was not central to his work; therefore, the emphasis seems rather arbitrary." 

Response: I'm afraid I disagree with you here. Staal devoted an entire chapter to the discussion of drugs--primarily psychedelic drugs--in his book (Chapter 12).  He also argues that there's good evidence that there are "similarities between mystical and drug-induced states" (p.155). Moreover, in chapt. 9, Staal had already observed that, "If mysticism is to be studied seriously, it should not merely be studied indirectly and from without, but also directly and from within." He goes on to advocate for scholars attempting to experience mystical states--states that he argues could be triggered by drugs.  I don't see that connection as arbitrary.

You: "There are large jumps in the text, which makes it challenging to follow the argumentation. p. 5-6. jumps from UME in cross-cultural literature to deep structures, then to a summary that seems to reach a bit further than the previous paragraphs would allow “In summary, theories based on similarities are only reductionistic if their theorists claim no other approach to the study of mysticism is possible; conversely, if we use the same metric, constructivists and postmodernists have been reductionistic, arguing that only differences matter.”, then back to Huxley. 

Response: I'm not really sure how to correct this problem since I do not see any jumping around. On the pages you mention, I suggest that we should entertain the possibility of similarities on the grounds that (1) similarities regarding unitive experiences exist in the primary literature, (2) similarities focused on the UME abound in the secondary literature (offering 16 examples of this, giving quotes of support in footnotes so as not to slow the flow of ideas in the main text), (3) point out that the constructivist position (arguing that similarities cannot exist) has produced much literature in opposition, (4) put those pieces together to argue that there is to suggest that UMEs may in fact exist cross-culturally, and (5) then return to Huxley's reasons for why that might be so (isomorphism and the possibility of UMEs as an inherent human capacity).

You: The conclusion is missing. 

Response: You are entirely correct, and thanks for pointing that out.  I was worried about my paper being overly long, but it is an oversight not to summarize.  I will correct the problem.  Thanks.

You: Some other recommendations:  title: import or importance? 

Response: I think either could work, but I prefer "import" because it suggests to me the "meaning" as well as the "significance" of something.  But it is a personal choice.

-Instead of language and tool making, what other examples could you mention that are more closely related to your topic? (Shared similar experiences or other religious phenomena) 

Response: Well, I do point out in the same sentence that there is a shared "search for meaning," plus I later use the cross-cultural example of our shared psychological tendency to create "a sense of self" and a curiosity about its nature.

You: The language of the paper reflects a style that closely resembles spoken language and sometimes comes off as too casual, undermining the content of the work:

Response: I think this is no longer true.  However, please note that since these instances of language have no impact on the thesis of the paper, I'm happy to rephrase the comments.  Specifically, I've changed "elephant in the room" to "the unspoken problem that has remained with us."  I'm still looking for "hard point to get across" but when I find it, I'll change it to a "difficult point to make." 

You: Sentences are sometimes too long. At page 3. this could be the start of a new sentence: "...for instance, in Katz’s highly influential criticism..." 

Response: This too is a personal preference but I've made the suggested change, starting a new paragraph at "For instance, in Katz's..."  Thanks.

You: References missing: 

Response: noted and soon to be corrected in a new version of the document.  Please have a look in a couple of days.

You: Are experiences mediated or their interpretations? It might be worth it to clarify your position 

Response: I don't think it's an either or situation for either the experience or the interpretation, as I've argued elsewhere.  Huxley believed the experiences (of UMEs, as well as all human experiences)have mediated elements and that the interpretations are also mediated, though they too can have similarities. The focus here is not on the particularities of mediation but rather on the possibility that elements of similarity may also exist.  I think the long debate in our field (prominently between Katz and Forman) regarding whether or not a "Pure consciousness" experience is possible has tended to generate the view that if an experience has elements of mediation than elements of similarity are not possible.  Why would this necessarily be the case?  I do not think it is the case and I have argued elsewhere why I believe this, but that discussion would certainly exceed the scope of this paper as I think of it. 

You: There is a variety of experiences described in James’s work from quasi mystical experiences to UME. His work was also heavily criticized for his focus on UME and being elitist by it.

Response: Absolutely true, but my reference to James was not an intro to critiquing his work.  I only wished to point out that he is one of many scholars who have cited the UME as similarity of experience across cultures.

You: How do you connect the potential you mentioned in the beginning and the possibility that it only applies to a selected few people? “William James was one of the first to emphasize the importance of the UME, writing in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)” (p.4.) While you start mentioning it on page 6, you might already want to connect this part with your later argument. 

Response: Can you clarify your point here?  Truly sorry, I don't know what to address.

You: p. 6. “However, in 1945, he could see no reliable method by which the everyday person could access this latent ability—though his opinion soon changed.” These methods are now available to everyday people, what consequences are you drawing from that? 

Response: I think it's a mixed bag, as it was back in the 1960s. Jules Evans has been covering the negative impact of the psychedelic renaissance for a few years now, and I agree that caution is recommended.  However, I also think that if used responsibly these sessions with the drugs, especially in clinical settings, will produce a trove of experiential data that will have value for the study of mystical experience.

You: p. 6. mysticoto-mimetic – your expression? 

Response: No, this is an actual term used in humanistic psychology, though it sometimes doesn't have the hyphen.

Lastly for now, I DO appreciate your close reading of my paper and I've made several corrections on your recommendation that have improved it.  Thanks.  By the way, I also appreciated the collegial tone of your remarks and wish all our colleagues used the same.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article is an impassioned plea to correct an alleged over-correction away from perennialism toward constructivism.  However, it has two flaws which absolutely must be corrected.

First, while the author rightly complains that some (e.g. Katz) do not directly cite Huxley, the author makes the same mistake here, not quoting constructivists and their critiques, let alone engaging with them. For example, in a footnote, the author quotes Kimberly Patton describing Jonathan Z. Smith as follows: "“he shares the strong postmodern preference for
difference over sameness, and its assumption that whereas the former is ‘real,’ the latter is ‘imagined’ and exists only in the mind of the beholder.”  This is a preposterous and inadequate assessment of Smith. 'Postmodern' is not defined and is used as a kind of bugaboo. Smith does not have a 'preference' for difference; he reached that conclusion by close research attending to differences. Nor does he say that sameness is merely imagined; he says it is a conclusion reached by scholars with a theological agenda -- which this author finally reveals at the end of the paper -- and not justified by the evidence. A wrong conclusion, not 'imaginary.'  This is but one example.  The article absolutely must engage directly with constructivist critiques, not create a straw man out of fake 'postmodernism.' To be clear, I believe it is possible to respond cogently to these critiques, but a mere dismissal of them based on secondary sources is not good scholarship.

If we turn to the evidence itself, across human history, the vast majority of religious psychedelic use has taken place in indigenous contexts which do not foreground or even describe unitive consciousness. If UMEs are the center of psychedelic experience, how do we account for their absence in Native American, Meso-American, and other indigenous contexts which have by far the most experience with psychedelic practice?  This omission is glaring.  The statement that "the unitive mystical experience (UME) can be identified in the cross-cultural literature of mysticism (the same literature that constructivists have relied upon) is to my mind beyond question" is only true if one is extremely selective with the 'literature of mysticism' and ignores the vast majority of psychedelic mysticism/spirituality. Incidentally, it has also been convincingly rebutted, with evidence, by Boaz Huss in the Jewish context - he is not cited here.

Second, the author steel-mans recent and Huxleyan perennialism. Richards, for example, absolutely says that there is a common core to religious experience in his book. The author notes that Huxley "privileged the “unitive knowledge” as likely to have the most value" but does not explore the religious/theological commitments that caused him to do so - i.e. from Stace and Neo-Vedanta. It was Huxley's own theological positions that dictated his privileging, certainly not empirical data. And the MEQ replicates perennialist assumptions about mystical experience uncritically.

Is there really a predominance of constructivism in psychedelic research? I would say the opposite is true. Perennialism still reigns in this field, even if, as the author notes, religion scholars have critiqued it heavily for 40 years (for evidentiary reasons, not postmodern preference).  The article does not cite recent scholarship by Sharday Mosurinjohn and Jay Michaelson (most recently in Canopy Forum) that discusses this phenomenon in detail, or attempts by others (e.g. Palitsky et al) to provide a richer framework for understanding psychedelic spiritual experiences. That must be rectified as well.

Finally, at the end of the article, the author comes clean about their own theological commitments, which are all well and good but which suggest a less than objective position on the issues being discussed. The author asks "would the sense of meaning, identity, and purpose, i.e., compassion, resulting from a UME have been as strong without the sense of having experienced something ontological real? I do not think so." True enough - but the sense of something is not the reality of something. It is odd that this 'addendum' puts the author's theological cards on the table, but also not surprising given what has come before it.

Again, it is quite possible to stake out a middle position between constructivism and perennialism -- as the author rightly says of Huxley, the constructivist position is not as extreme as it is often caricatured to be.  Perhaps, as the author suggests, Huxley himself occupies that middle position between Eliade/Frazer on one side and Smith/Katz on the other.  However, to make that claim in a scholarly rather than polemical context, one must engage fairly with the sources and the evidence.  The constructivist critiques must be accurately presented, the evidence admitted, recent scholarship discussed, the overreach of contemporary perennialists acknowledged, and one's own theological biases either bracketed or stated at the outset. Then the evidence the author does cite for UMEs can be recognized and appreciated.

 

Author Response

Responses to reviewer 2 (will be in bold print, with your comments leading the discussion):

You wrote: First of all, relative to the reason why the research design of the paper wasn't clear, the publisher accidentally used the first paragraph of the paper as the "abstract" and neglected to use the actual abstract where the design is laid out.

This article is an impassioned plea to correct an alleged over-correction away from perennialism toward constructivism.  However, it has two flaws which absolutely must be corrected. First, while the author rightly complains that some (e.g. Katz) do not directly cite Huxley, the author makes the same mistake here, not quoting constructivists and their critiques, 

Given that the paper is not about the old debate, why must I cite Katz view on why only differences matter?  Does anyone doubt that he said this?  But I’m happy to quote him. Easily done in a footnote, though my paper is not focused on a detailed account of what triggered the emphasis on differences.

 

 

 

 

 

let alone engaging with them. For example, in a footnote, the author quotes Kimberly Patton describing Jonathan Z. Smith as follows: "“he shares the strong postmodern preference for difference over sameness, and its assumption that whereas the former is ‘real,’ the latter is ‘imagined’ and exists only in the mind of the beholder.”  This is a preposterous and inadequate assessment of Smith. 

And this is a preposterous claim.Patton has based her fifty year career on Smith’s work and cites him as her primary mentor. , She is a great champion of Smith and convened his festschrift, so it surprises me you you suggest she doesn’t understand his position.  That said, the essay is about why we should respect similarities, not the details about why our discipline came to focus almost exclusively on differences.  The pertinent details relate to the thesis, not the opening remark about differences, a history that has been well covered in previous literature.  There is zero doubt the focus in comparative mysticism for the past forty years has favored differences. I agree that the exact reasons why this has been the case can’t be summed up in four or five sentences, but that is not the focus of the paper and the thesis doesn’t depend upon those reasons.

'Postmodern' is not defined and is used as a kind of bugaboo. Smith does not have a 'preference' for difference; he reached that conclusion by close research attending to differences. Nor does he say that sameness is merely imagined; he says it is a conclusion reached by scholars with a theological agenda -- which this author finally reveals at the end of the paper -- and not justified by the evidence. A wrong conclusion, not 'imaginary.'  This is but one example.  The article absolutely must engage directly with constructivist critiques, not create a straw man out of fake 'postmodernism.' To be clear, I believe it is possible to respond cogently to these critiques, but a mere dismissal of them based on secondary sources is not good scholarship.

As I’ve said above, rehearsing the history of postmodern critiques of comparative mysticism is not the point of the paper. I was simply referring in a very general way to some of the reasons why the study of similarities has been discouraged.

If we turn to the evidence itself, across human history, the vast majority of religious psychedelic use has taken place in indigenous contexts which do not foreground or even describe unitive consciousness. 

Here I strongly disagree with you again.  Unitive experiences are described in the accounts given by many indigenous groups, whether or not they are weighed as of primary importance or not.  I can cite the instances, as have Bia Labate and others.  But this charge is also extraneous to the paper, given that I’m not saying that either I or Huxley saw the unitive experience as essential to either world mysticism or psychedelic experience.

If UMEs are the center of psychedelic experience,

Wait, who said they were the “center of psychedelic experience?”  Certainly not me or Huxley.  They are simply one of many types of experience.

 how do we account for their absence in Native American, Meso-American, and other indigenous contexts which have by far the most experience with psychedelic practice?  This omission is glaring.  

As I’ve already said, I strongly disagree with you that the experiences haven’t been reported in the indigenous literature; I can show them to you.  Moreover, since I haven’t argued that such experiences are central to psychedelic experience, but rather that such experiences have simply been reported in current studies with psychedelics—which is common and undeniable—then how such experiences may be interpreted as less valuable than Huxley believed, or how other experiences may actually have more value, is simply another subject.

The statement that "the unitive mystical experience (UME) can be identified in the cross-cultural literature of mysticism (the same literature that constructivists have relied upon) is to my mind beyond question" is only true if one is extremely selective with the 'literature of mysticism' and ignores the vast majority of psychedelic mysticism/spirituality. Incidentally, it has also been convincingly rebutted, with evidence, by Boaz Huss in the Jewish context - he is not cited here.

I’ve been working in the field of comparative mysticism for more than thirty years and strongly disagree that unitive experiences are somehow an anomaly—which is why the majority of studies in the secondary literature for more than a century have cited such experiences.  No claim is being made that such experiences are the only type of mystical experience, that they are central or essential to mystical experience in general. Consequently, to say that there are views of what is most pertinent or central to one tradition or another is simply not relevant to my position.  As Perry Schmidt-Leukel has argued, even when such experiences exist inside of a tradition (and unitive experiences have been reported in the Jewish literature of Kabbalah also, each tradition weighs them according to its own metrics of value, as I, referencing Huxley, acknowledge.

Second, the author steel-mans recent and Huxleyan perennialism. Richards, for example, absolutely says that there is a common core to religious experience in his book. 

Whether Richards said it or not is of little concern here, given that Huxley himself never made such a claim.  Huxley posited the unitive mystical experience as one thread (along with visionary experiences, paranormal experiences, presence experiences, etc.) discernible across the literature.  He had no interest in religion and claimed no authority over its essence.

The author notes that Huxley "privileged the “unitive knowledge” as likely to have the most value" but does not explore the religious/theological commitments that caused him to do so - i.e. from Stace and Neo-Vedanta. It was Huxley's own theological positions that dictated his privileging, certainly not empirical data. 

Again, since he didn’t claim to have found the core or essence of either religion or mysticism, this is not a relevant comment.  Looking at all types of mystical or non-ordinary experiences, any author offering judgments about which may have most value for human life are going to make those judgments using qualitative metrics gleaned from their backgrounds.  That’s simply the case. Huxley made no secret of why he was theorizing the unitive experience to have most value. His biases and metrics were made clear, but that doesn’t invalidate his theory may hold water.  He was well aware of the secondary literature on mysticism of his own time, and was relying on their reasoned views of why this is true as well.  

And the MEQ replicates perennialist assumptions about mystical experience uncritically.

OK, so you’re in the camp of J. Christian Greer, Jeffry A. Brreau, Paul Gillis-Smith, Sharday Mosurinjohn, and others who make this claim.  I disagree with it and am currently writing a refutation of the position. The Stace-Pahnke typology has its problems, including that it leaves out several characteristics of mystical experience commonly included in the literature, such as luminosity, awe, and sensed presences, but simply including the characteristic of unity—a characteristic that is definitely found in the literature—is not proof of support for the perennial philosophy.  Much to say here, but for now let me just add that my paper is not about the Stace-Pahnke typology or the MEQ.

Is there really a predominance of constructivism in psychedelic research? I would say the opposite is true. 

I’m not sure who you’re arguing with here, since I made no claim that constructivism has dominated psychedelic research.

Perennialism still reigns in this field, 

I’m very familiar with papers that make this claim.  My considerable experience is that most research in psychedelic studies is conducted by scientists who have no idea what the perennial philosophy is.  I’ve asked many of them, including scientists in the vanguard of psychedelic studies, to describe the perennial philosophy, only to hear them say, “What is the perennial philosophy?”  So if the claim that the MEQ implicitly supports the perennial philosophy doesn’t hold, and I argue that it doesn’t, then your position is debatable and I’m happy to debate it with you.  But, again, that issue is beyond the scope of the present paper.

In addition, the old straw man accusation was that the perennial philosophy is a position claiming to know the core or essence of all religion and/or mysticism, but Huxley never made such a claim and today the vast majority of self-identifying perennial philosophers come out of humanistic psychology, with little to no interest in religion or its essence.

even if, as the author notes, religion scholars have critiqued it heavily for 40 years (for evidentiary reasons, not postmodern preference).  The article does not cite recent scholarship by Sharday Mosurinjohn and Jay Michaelson (most recently in Canopy Forum) that discusses this phenomenon in detail, or attempts by others (e.g. Palitsky et al) to provide a richer framework for understanding psychedelic spiritual experiences. That must be rectified as well.

As I said above, such debate is extraneous to the thesis of this paper, which simply claims that unitive mystical experiences occur cross-culturally, also occur in many psychedelic session reports, and may have value in line with what Huxley argued—even if other sorts of experiences also occur and have value.

If you have access to the comments of the first reviewer, you’ll see how biased your claims are that the paper is weak. Your attempts to pull the discussion away from the thesis toward other issues related to mystical experience, including issues related to why our field has focused on differences over similarities for forty years, the debate between constructivists and perennialists of the Forman sort, who place a premium on the ‘pure consciousness’ experience, or issues related to the MEQ, are simply extraneous.  Please simply write your own paper of refutation and we will let our colleagues decide whether or not my paper has merit.  Note that your bias was so strong that you didn't even take note of a glaring weakness of the paper in that I neglected to add a conclusion. 

Meanwhile, I will ask the publisher for another, far less partisan, review.