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.
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.