Dr. David Yaden’s interest in studying spiritual experiences started with one of his own. As he describes it, it was a totally spontaneous experience involving an intensely altered state of consciousness that left him with an enhanced, positive perspective on life. “This became an obsession, really, to understand this. I learned that these experiences have been studied throughout history by scholars and increasingly by scientists,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani. “As I learned more, it became more and more clear that this is what I wanted to study, and that's what I still do.” He happens to be in a perfect spot to do it as the Roland R. Griffiths Professor in Psychedelic Research on Secular Spirituality and Well-Being at Johns Hopkins, named for a leading figure in the modern renaissance in psychedelic research. The basic scope of the project he’s managing is non-clinical. Topics of study include better quantifying the risk-benefit ratio of psychedelics as a positive intervention; looking into how psychedelic experiences that have a spiritual character relate to similar experiences not triggered by psychedelics; and collecting data from non-Western population centers across the world to provide a more complete picture of how much cultural expectations play a role in influencing these experiences, as well as how similar they are across cultures. There is much to learn in this probing look at a fascinating dimension of psychedelic research.
Mentioned in this episode: https://griffithsfund.org/
If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/raisethelinepodcast
View all episodes
By Osmosis from Elsevier
4.9
6161 ratings
Dr. David Yaden’s interest in studying spiritual experiences started with one of his own. As he describes it, it was a totally spontaneous experience involving an intensely altered state of consciousness that left him with an enhanced, positive perspective on life. “This became an obsession, really, to understand this. I learned that these experiences have been studied throughout history by scholars and increasingly by scientists,” he tells host Shiv Gaglani. “As I learned more, it became more and more clear that this is what I wanted to study, and that's what I still do.” He happens to be in a perfect spot to do it as the Roland R. Griffiths Professor in Psychedelic Research on Secular Spirituality and Well-Being at Johns Hopkins, named for a leading figure in the modern renaissance in psychedelic research. The basic scope of the project he’s managing is non-clinical. Topics of study include better quantifying the risk-benefit ratio of psychedelics as a positive intervention; looking into how psychedelic experiences that have a spiritual character relate to similar experiences not triggered by psychedelics; and collecting data from non-Western population centers across the world to provide a more complete picture of how much cultural expectations play a role in influencing these experiences, as well as how similar they are across cultures. There is much to learn in this probing look at a fascinating dimension of psychedelic research.
Mentioned in this episode: https://griffithsfund.org/
If you like this podcast, please share it on your social channels. You can also subscribe to the series and check out all of our episodes at www.osmosis.org/raisethelinepodcast
111,397 Listeners
4,035 Listeners
7,925 Listeners
745 Listeners
15,207 Listeners
61 Listeners
1,805 Listeners