Psychedelics, parapsychology and exceptional human experiences
David Luke & Marios Kittenis - Rising Researchers Session
The World Psychedelic Forum, 6:30pm, Friday March 21st, 2008, Basel, Switzerland
In 1912, Zerda Bayon isolated one of the active principles of ayahuasca, now called harmine, and named it ‘telepathine’ because of its apparently psychical properties. At the beginning of the 1950’s the psychedelic research era began in earnest, since which time these substances have been associated with paranormal experiences - such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and out-of-body experiences - by many of the researchers who have studied their effects on humans.
For example, Humphrey Osmond, who coined the term ‘psychedelic’ via correspondence with Aldous Huxley, shared with him a conviction that these psychic abilities could be accessed when the doors of perception were opened. Currently however, virtually no research is being conducted in this field despite the recent revival of research into the potential therapeutic benefit of psychedelics in humans. This paper discusses the authors’ research to date in this area: reviewing the literature on psychedelics and parapsychology (the psychological study of paranormal processes), conducting a survey of paranormal experiences associated with different psychoactive substances, and correlating self-reports of the number of consumed psychedelics with performance on a precognition task. The authors’ plans for future research are also discussed.