Yes, I think it will definitely be difficult. I think the biggest difficulty will be folks in science, medicine, business, and in the culture in general to “fill in the blank” when it comes to defining the ultimate meaning of these experiences. There will be increasing numbers of gurus and religions built around these mysteries. But from where I sit my focus is to make sure science, clinical psychology, and medicine don’t get warped. When we use these as therapeutics or research tools, we much guard against the temptation to interpret the metaphysical meaning for people. This is already happening too much. One can set the occasion to bring someone to the experience, and provide for close and caring personal support to help the person make their own meaning, but we must resist the temptation to provide a metaphysical interpretation for people. I wrote about these themes here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00198
Yes, I think it will definitely be difficult. I think the biggest difficulty will be folks in science, medicine, business, and in the culture in general to “fill in the blank” when it comes to defining the ultimate meaning of these experiences. There will be increasing numbers of gurus and religions built around these mysteries. But from where I sit my focus is to make sure science, clinical psychology, and medicine don’t get warped. When we use these as therapeutics or research tools, we much guard against the temptation to interpret the metaphysical meaning for people. This is already happening too much. One can set the occasion to bring someone to the experience, and provide for close and caring personal support to help the person make their own meaning, but we must resist the temptation to provide a metaphysical interpretation for people. I wrote about these themes here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.0c00198