The Four Stages of the Psychedelic Renaissance: Talk & Q&A with Thomas Roberts, PhD

From Hume to Huxley: could the psychedelic movement be the next Enlightenment?

Just as the historical Renaissance, Reformation, and the Enlightenment spread to enrich and reorganise wider society, today’s Psychedelic Renaissance may do the same for ours. Since first meeting Alan Watts, Stanislav Grof, Joseph Campbell, and a host of pioneers in the early 1970s, Thomas Roberts, professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University and founder of Bicycle Day*, has spent the last four decades exploring the potential of psychedelics to open new doors of inquiry across a host of academic disciplines from art to anthropology. In this fascinating talk, he will explore his theory of the four stages of this process and the research potential for psychedelics far beyond science and psychology.

The four areas of the psychedelic renaissance he examines include:

The medical-neuroscience stage

This stage predominates now. Advances in medical schools, biology labs, and clinics mark this stage. And with mystical experiences and changed attitudes toward self and others often the main variable in healing, this stage naturally leads to…

The spiritual-religious stage

This stage is characterised by the contributions of psychedelics as an aid on spiritual paths. Psychedelics that are used intentionally to invoke a spiritual experience are known as entheogens- they generate (engen) an experience of god (theo) within. As 21st century research shows, it’s possible to experimentally study spirituality, meaningfulness, altruism, sense of wellbeing, social relations, textual interpretation, motivation, the origins and history of religion, and much more. But these topics often lead out of the spiritual realm with crossover in the humanities and social sciences, giving rise to…

The intellectual-artistic stage

Psychedelics make experimental humanities possible, offer new theories for psychocriticism, inspire the arts, start new lines of social science research, and even- using psychedelics as research methods- offer to invent new intellectual paradigms. Together they provide a fresh lens for numerous academic fields from women’s studies to linguistics, orchestrating a new ‘Psychedemia’ as Prof. Nese Devenot named it.

But a natural question arises: Besides cannabis, psychedelics, and other psychoactive substances, are there other drug-free ways of exploring and empowering our minds? The answer leads us to..

The multistate-mindapps stage

Often referred to as ‘altered states of consciousness,’ Multistate Theory recognises that any complete study of our minds must include all the mind’s variations, not just our ordinary default state of waking consciousness. Plants and chemicals have hundreds of multistate non-drug relatives. Their cousins include the many types of yoga, chanting, breathing routines, martial arts, contemplative prayer, meditation, sensory overload and isolation, biofeedback and neurofeedback, and a host of brain-based techniques. What happens when we combine these states in different ways? (Ayahuasca in a sensory deprivation tank. anyone?) What opportunities for growth and study might these combinations present?

Thomas Roberts is professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, where he taught the world’s first inter-disciplinary psychedelics course from 1981-2012. He is a founding member of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a former visiting scientist at Johns Hopkins, editor of Psychedelics and Spirituality and the author of the books Psychedelic Horizons, The Psychedelic Future of the Mind, and Mind Apps. Tom has spoken at conferences from northern Finland to southern Australia, from Iceland to Brazil. 

*In 1985, Tom established the celebration of Bicycle Day (April 19) to honour the day that Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered LSD's psychoactive effects
 

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