Unofficial Vital Student ‘Zine
Notes from Vital Psychedelic Training class of ‘23
Philosophy of Psychedelics with Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
‘Psychedelic philosophy’ or ‘psy-phi’ aims to legitimise the culture of consciousness expansion. And much more.
My unofficial Vital Study Zine #6 with observations from Vital Psychedelic Training and recent happenings in the space
“The most exciting talk is the space right now is coming from philosophers,” said the 21st Century’s answer to David Attenborough, Merlin Sheldrake at June’s Breaking Convention conference in London.
Psychedelic philosophy or ‘psy-phi’ aims to legitimise psychedelic insight, the culture of consciousness expansion and post-industrial ideology.
The discipline applies academic rigour to tripped-out insight. It suggests how expanded consciousness can be applied in areas ranging from business to ecology – and revamp psychotherapy.
Fittingly, psychedelic philosophy’s origin is the West Country of England. The academic centre being Exeter University, which announced the first bachelor’s degree in psychedelic studies at its 2022 Philosophy of Psychedelics conference.
Other cosmopolitan hubs like Amsterdam and Berlin have got their eyes on our special cider. Exeter University’s much-anticipated compilation Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience, is published by Bloomsbury this summer. And its colourful co-editor Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes materialised before Vital students this week, direct from Dartmoor.
Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes, who edited Exeter’s tome, is a leading light in the movement. The reboot of Marvel superhero Karnak is modelled on him. Beyond providing much needed aesthetic airs – he is rarely photographed without a falcon on his arm – he provides psychedelic philosophy’s imaginative spark.
“Humphry Osmond wrote to Huxley that he believed LSD’s greatest potential was its philosophical, social and religious implications,” he says, “I think the potential is still there.”
Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes has documented the rich relationship between philosophy and psychedelic use, and spearheaded the rehabilitation of controversial philosophers including Henri Bergson, Ernst Junger and Nietzsche alongside rebranding cuddlier thinkers like Spinoza, George Bernard Shaw and Sir Humphry Davy.
Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes of Exeter University’s acclaimed Philosophy of Psychedelics department, which announced the first bachelor’s degree in psychedelic studies at its 2022 Philosophy of Psychedelics conference.
His books Noumenautics and Modes of Sentience are out now from Psychedelic Press. Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience is available to preorder now and out 18 July 2022. Find him at philosopher.eu and @PeterSjostedtH.
You can watch Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes’ TED Talk on consciousness here plus a bunch more I put on this YouTube resource channel.
These five items I pulled from the week’s research are themed along Vital’s natural element-themed structure. Air provides an overview of psychedelic use, Fire concerns therapeutic applications, Water covers ‘space holding’ – the art of keeping it together, Earth is where you’ll find medical matters, and Ether discusses integration, the process of bringing psychedelic power into regular life. Click straight through to your pet subject below.
Next issue: Dr Rick ‘Spirit Molecule’ Strassman spares no set or setting in his evaluation of the space right now
Next Up, The Psychedelic Enlightenment
“Social, ethical, legal and metaphysical issues can undergo a transformation akin to psychedelic therapy” says an inspiring new movement, with beards to match.
Approach
“Social, ethical, legal and metaphysical issues can undergo a transformation akin to psychedelic therapy” says an inspiring new movement with beards to match
By Dana Awatani, works via Athr Art
Psychedelics have a purpose beyond healing or good times according to the next generation of philosophers.
Dr Chris Letheby is a laid-back (seemingly, you never know with these philosophers) Australian contemporary thinker. Say ‘epistemology’ in the accent.
He likes jumpers and beards, and was the first to bring out a book titled The Philosophy of Psychedelics, published by Oxford University Press in 2021.
During a Letheby lecture I sneak into from Berlin-based MIND, Dr Letheby academic definitions of ‘knowledge’ onto psychedelic insight with skill and precision, deploying bon mots from global philosophers and key points from contemporary research along the way.
“Social, ethical, legal, and metaphysical issues can undergo psychedelic transformation akin to that achieved in therapy”
Psychedelic philosophy’s nemesis is ‘the comforting delusion’; are we communing with the cosmos or just high and talking bollocks? Is psychedelic therapy, in Charles Grob’s phrase, an “existential medicine?” Or is it, as Michael Pollan wondered, ‘simply foisting a comforting delusion on the sick and dying”?’ Dr Letheby addresses in this article for MAPS.
He’s calling for a ‘Psychedelic Enlightenment’ to follow our current ‘Psychedelic Renaissance’ period: “Social, ethical, legal, and metaphysical issues can undergo psychedelic transformation akin to that achieved in therapy,” he declares unpretentiously and convincingly.
Philosophical debate though is not for the feint of heart, or head. Throw some ‘non-specific amplifiers’ into the mix and things get more real than real. Indeed as I write Vital week six lecturer Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes is fencing wits with Chris Letheby in the specialist press, about… admittedly I’ve not quite figured it out just yet from giving the article a scan. Although chances are it’s something to do with ‘the hard problem of consciousness’ (how life springs from matter, or otherwise). It usually is.
Launching himself into this moshpit of contemplation is Aiden Lyon, another Australian with no beard this time but plenty of jumpers, out of Amsterdam University whose book… Psychedelic Experience is out soon, again from Oxford University Press. The formidable Lyon has a mind like a steel trap, unsurprisingly, plus the air of a frustrated Victorian man of reputation who’d prefer to be searching for King Solomon’s Mines, but the transpersonal will have to do instead. He opens a Mind lecture I attend by pointing out his ‘circular’ theory taking the ‘mind-manifesting’ definition of psychedelic experience has been approved by Imperial College’s Dr Robin Carhart-Harris.
“Nature has intrinsic worth. Not just spiritual worth”
Lyon, who’s already set up in consultancy, slices his way through the ‘Are psychedelic insights to be taken seriously?’ thing to point out that they can be very useful. There’s loads more in this issue’s Medical item. Lyon and Letheby are both terribly plausible chaps. But you may be forgiven thinking it’s all a bit monochrome geometric patterns, and not enough Tarot cards. Left, as opposed to right brain.
Step forward Sjöstedt-Hughes, a former schoolteacher whose repertoire arguably channels the psychedelic. He does have a beard, but the similarities end there.
“There’s seemingly something in us that needs expansion”
He’s catalogued philosophy’s psychedelic associations, and spares no superlatives when addressing the power of 5-MEO DMT compared to earthly religious experience. Rarely (but not uniquely) among contemporary Western psychedelic renaissance types he tackles subjects like the ‘trickster’ archetype and its association with psychedelics, non-dualism and subjective morality, the existence and nature of ‘God’ – “looks like he’s out there but he doesn’t love you – nature has intrinsic worth, not just spiritual worth.”
Sjöstedt-Hughes proposes the return of metaphysics to the political conversation and the high street: “like we’d see a therapist, we’d consult a philosophical-spiritual advisor… ‘the metaphysician will see you now’,” is just one flourish he delivers from behind his tinted aviators, “you could grab a leaflet featuring suggestions for alternative spiritual paths, like the simulation theory, or the receiver, on the way out.”
But the psychedelic philosophers have ambitions way beyond the ivory towers of academia, or the medical industrial complex. Sjöstedt-Hughes in particular.
“I hope psychedelics can be part of a grander idealism for civilisation. There ‘s seemingly something in us that needs expansion. Psychedelics might offer this. I do hope for it. and I do believe it’s actually going to happen.”
Become one with your Moomin cup…
Can psychedelic philosophy explain the healing powers of the cosmic whole?
Therapy
Can psychedelic philosophy explain our innate sense of the cosmic whole?
Psychedelic philosopher par eminence Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes pictures a new breed of consciousness doctors to work alongside clinicians and therapists.
“The metaphysician will see you now,” he jests about his notion of a service combining thinker, spiritual advisor and life coach.
“Spinoza, Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein all agreed nature was ‘God’,” says Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes, “and it doesn’t love you.”
God is still all around. Like never before; ‘pansychism’ is the term for consciousness in all things. Like philosopher Jussi Jylkkä half-jests in this recent video interview with Sjöstedt-Hughes for The Philosopher, “So… I become one with my Moomin cup?”
Before you marvel, “My ashtray is alive?” the consciousness operates at an atomic level, obvs. But, it’s still an ashtray. Keep up.
“You should be doubting all the things you doubted before; you are uncertain about being certain”
Psi-Phi, ‘philosophy of psychedelics’ presents an academic argument for the significance and benefit of psychedelic drugs. A sub-school of ‘psychedelic metaphysics’ explores belief structures like panpsychism. Legitimisation and education of reality-organising frameworks might aid mental health, like the personal ‘higher power’ 12-steppers are urged to take guidance from.
“The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes,” wrote Johann Goethe. And the psychedelic philosophy material is dense. My clumsy, infant sense of the subject is tempted to conclude that philosophy is to psychology what Lego Technic is to Duplo; it’s been debating the stuff YouTubers think they’ve just discovered for 500 years. Arguably, 5000.
Psychedelic philosophy’s nemesis is the comforting delusion.
“Is psychedelic therapy,” in Charles Grob’s phrase, an “existential medicine?”
Or is it, as Michael Pollan wondered, “Simply foisting a comforting delusion on the sick and dying”?’
Chris Letheby addresses the ‘Aren’t you just taking acid?’ question in this article for MAPS. Letheby also cites Danish wellbeing guru, former special forces operator Nikolai Moltke-Left and his doctrine of “unbinding self” that echoes psychedelics, and how popular he is with the chattering classes (Moltke-Left is collaborating with Lego, sync).
And anyway, Aiden Lyon reckons “You should be doubting all the things you doubted before; you are uncertain about being certain,” so that’s that.
It’s all quite radical in places. Psychedelics have a habit of flipping over sacred cows. This wannabe trickster never tires of reminding the psi-phi lads that most of their favourite philosophers met with sticky ends at the hands of the mob: “Often I have the impression that I am writing on paper already browning in the licks of the flames,” mulled Ernst Junger, coiner of the term psychonaut. Who actually lived till 102 years of age.
More healthy, less normal
The performance enhancing and problem-solving powers of psychedelics are growing in legitimacy and acceptance.
Medical
The performance enhancing and problem solving powers of psychedelics are growing in legitimacy and acceptance
By Sidone Roddam via Gallery 46
Psychedelic philosophy endorses mind-expanding supplement use as ethically sound plus highly beneficial to discovery and innovation.
Scientific problem solving with psychedelics is the pet subject of Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide author Dr James Fadiman to this day.
“It would be horrific if psychedelics just turned into anti-depressants,” says Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes, “What a waste of our psychedelic renaissance.”
The ideology begins its case for supplemental LSD use with historical examples, like Nietzsche’s concept of moral relativity. The moustachioed firebrand challenged conservative christian ethics he concluded were toxic to society. Nietzsche believed the church promoted a ‘slave morality’ that he claimed advantaged the unadventurous and the unmotivated – crucially at the expense of the more inspired.
“As with after-work drinks not everyone wants to take part”
Admittedly Nietzsche could come across as a little problematic. So the argument in favour of psychedelic use for self-improvement also deploys topical markers of acceptability.
“Carey Mullins said he ‘learned to use his visual problem solving imagination’ and that led to the applications of DNA,” is one of Psychedelic Philosophy author Dr Chris Letheby’s favourite pieces of lecture ammo.
Mullins’ open declaration of how much impact LSD had on his studies also makes an appearance in the summer ’22 paper in Drug Science, Policy and Law.
“Many scientific insights were partially if not wholly dependent on criminalised activity”
Psychedelics as potential catalysts of scientific creativity and insight by Drs David Luke and Sam Gandy presents a watertight case for creative problem solving under low doses of LSD (40ug to 100ug have been used in limited official trials over the decades) and otherwise.
The clarion call deploys history, philosophy, scientific thinking and direct quotes from the likes of Einstein: “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” The paper covers the importance of dreams and ‘visions’ in personal and scientific breakthroughs, citing declarations from Google creator Larry Page and Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table. It lists the inventors who’ve cited their psychedelic use itself: Apple boss Steve Jobs claimed the drugs advised him to focus on product quality over revenue generation, and contemporary physicist Carlo Rovelli claims psychedelics gave him an understanding of the nature of time which inspired his career.
“Many of the insights outlined, including the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of PCR, were partially if not wholly dependent on criminalised activity… the potential of psychedelics as agents to support creative thinking demonstrates the restrictiveness of a ‘health-only’ classification that fails to holistically consider the breadth of risks and benefits of drug use,” it concludes.
Real life, as ever is far ahead of academia and the medical establishment, let alone politics. Data scientists like Ahnjili ZhuParris, who’s provided frameworks for microdose self-tests and speed learning on psychedelics, are at the cusp of both the ‘Quantified Self’ movement – an army of science nerds self-testing for self-improvement – and the subculture’s citizen science element.
“It would be horrific if psychedelics just turned into anti-depressants”
Ironically it’s exactly the attitude that eager start-up execs are drawn to. And modern-day corporatism is colonising the culture in its inimitable way. An article in the June ’22 issue of financial bible The Economist declared ‘Bosses want to feed psychedelics to their staff. Are they high?’
It turns out tripping in the office could be a case of two steps forward, one step back.
‘As with after-work drinks, not everyone wants to, or can, take part,’ The Economist reminds us more enthusiastic readers, ‘an asset manager at a big family office reports agonising over whether or not to accept an invitation from a firm in her portfolio to an (illegal) Ayahuasca retreat at a villa in California, with a shaman flown in for the occasion.’
A portent perhaps, that even in the psychedelic renaissance we are still fretting about our workplace networking obligations. Perhaps we were naive to assume we’d glide towards a seamless new interconnectedness.
More ancient forces, The Economist warns, are at play: ‘A mind-bending experience can lead workers to question everything—including capitalism and the nature of work.’
Truly we must be mindful when turning on the staff. The New Health Club and Field Trip are among the companies vying to usher in this new age of glad-handling. Which to be fair sounds a lot more compelling than Friday evening in the local Irish pub.
Apparently though, life is not all about work. And neither does our career have a monopoly on problems that require solving.
“I loved and desperately wanted my wife. This was a surprise to everyone including ourselves”
Within the pages of 1967’s The Problem Solving Psychedelic PG Stafford and BH Golightly went to the heart of the matter.
“Marriage may begin with a great deal that favours success and yet there is an appalling rate at which the relationship deteriorates… the ‘advice’ given by LSD is for the most part benevolent. Instead of encouraging disparagement of a mate for shortcomings, as may result from greater intellectual clarity, the drug generally activates emotional tolerance, if not empathy, and highlights hidden or forgotten attractive qualities.”
The writers quote two husbands who underwent LSD therapy in the 60s:
“I am able to talk to my wife more freely and frankly than I ever used to be. I am not so afraid of saying what I really think even if I know she will not agree. Apart from the restoration of intercourse, we really get on much better than before."
“I loved and desperately wanted my wife. This was a surprise to everyone, including ourselves, because as I said we had been through a bad time together. But under LSD it is impossible to fake anything: she was my connection with life.”
Certainly a more worthwhile state of affairs than after-work drinks.
Rising from the Ashes of God
A new mythology is the psychedelic philosophers’ highest ambition.
Integration
A new mythology is the psychedelic philosophers’ highest ambition
By Kevin Quigley , works available via Gallery 46
Hardcore philosophers like Junger, Reich, Nietzsche, Spinoza and Whitehead were happiest wandering around the woods.
You’d be forgiven for thinking they were only content when their books were being burned by all three of the Stalinists, Nazis and the Christian Evangelists (Spinoza and Reich’s actually were).
Yet “God is nature” proclaimed Spinoza (who also was not beyond emotional intelligence, advising: “The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”)
“We live in a post-cartesian, post-christian world,” Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes said to introduce the panel ‘Should we return to the gods of nature?’ at Amsterdam’s 2022 Institute of Art and Ideas festival, “the ecological crisis and the hard problem of consciousness steam from the bifurcation of nature. Déscartes split mind and matter; now we have thought as an extension of thought, science as extension of knowledge. and still don’t know how we get mind from meat. Viewing nature as simply physical discounts any part it plays in that.”
“What are the laws of nature? Physicists say they’re constantly changing”
In his Vital lecture on philosophy during the course’s first module on approaches to psychedelics, Sjöstedt-Hughes summarised: “Whitehead had the advantage of relativity and evolution: he is a combination of Einstein, Darwin and Spinoza. He concluded that nature has an intrinsic worth, not just spiritual worth. If a virus can be determined ‘living’ why not an atom or a molecule? The future is creative, not yet formed.”
He cites Whitehead’s ‘Process Philosophy’ as the closest to a post-quantum physics spiritual framework humanity has. With humility – “We have to acknowledge that we are nowhere near the answers, and that 5-MEO DMT and other peak experiences bring up ontologies unfathomable to the regular Western version, or any other.”
Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes’ philosophy goes beyond even the ‘panpsychism’ touched upon by voices like Anneka Harris in Conscious, where all matter contains some spark of life. It brings both ancient and renaissance hermeticism into the era where God is dead: “It combines process philosophy with Amerindian-style metaphysics, which are complex as opposed to animistic. God doesn’t ‘love’ you – he is comparable to Aristotle’s ‘prime mover’ rather than a benevolent force as such. Eternal life is now, stepping out of time.”
The psychoneural, where consciousness and the physical nervous system combine, exist within and are one with the natural, material world; the ‘lived experience’ that Terrence McKenna considers superior to any spiritual system: our purpose, vessel and environment in an infinitely expanding, spherical space opera.
“De Quincy said, ‘memories are never lost only found again. But what is memory?” Bellows Dr Sjöstedt-Hughes like a young Brian Blessed, “What are the laws of nature? Physicists say they’re constantly changing. If the past doesn’t exist, should it have more status than fiction?” Before whispering conspiratorially, “the druidic yearning we see in Britain could be connected.” Dr Aiden Lyon believes psychedelics could create a new mythological wisdom to underpin society.
“We have to acknowledge that we are nowhere near the answers”
There are now at least three Druidic orders vying for eyeballs in 21st Century Britain. Six thousand people turned up at 4:49am on summer Solstice 2022 to watch the sun hit the Heel Stone in the centre and spread rays throughout the circle.
Stonehenge at Summer Solstice 2022
In a British major kind-of newspaper, noted for usually disapproving of this sort of thing, a top-rated comment below its article on the gathering reads, (sic) ‘You don’t have to travel to Stonehenge and dress up to show your love of nature, the natural world and the Earth's life force, it is all around us. Feed the wildlife, plant flowers and trees, celebrate it that way, and respect it, it’s in us all ,we are part of it. We have a Female Blackbird that literally follows us around our small garden and stands at the green house door to be let in to help herself to the box of wild bird food we have in there, what a privilege for a wild animal to communicate with us and trust us to enter into the greenhouse when we are there. There’s magic in our own gardens and stones.'
Each ‘Zine features the most mind-blowing bits I scrawled down during each of Vital’s exclusive live lectures by the finest minds in the space. Browse them by issue or go straight to the introductions with lecturer details.
And search by the topics: Traditional and Modern Approaches, Therapy, Space Holding, Medical and Clinical, and Integration. Funnies at the end too.
“Social, ethical, legal and metaphysical issues can undergo a transformation akin to psychedelic therapy” says an inspiring new movement, with beards to match.