Original Illustration by Martin Clarke

What is the ‘Anima Mundi’ and how can it help us understand psychedelic experiences?

This is part of our column ‘Psychedelics in Depth‘ which defines and explains depth psychology topics in the context of psychedelics.

Once upon a time, people saw nature as vividly alive, full of gods, spirits, and beings that existed beyond the realm of human culture. Nature was ensouled, and the earth was animate. In the tradition of depth psychology, this concept is known as the Anima Mundi: the Soul of the world. In this article we will explore the interplay between psychedelics, the earth, and the spirit of place.

Can psychedelics put us in touch with a more-than-human intelligence that emanates from the earth itself? Do certain places carry particular energies or “souls” which psychedelics might allow us to perceive? Finally, what role can psychedelics play situated at the crossroads of nature and culture, especially in this time of dire ecological collapse?

Ask yourself: have you ever felt immersed in some ineffable communication with an aspect of the natural world during a psychedelic experience? Have you ever felt uneasy upon setting foot in certain places, yet unable to say why? Have you ever felt a powerful sensation upon visiting an ancient redwood grove, a stone circle, or one of the earth’s many sacred sites?

Truth be told, there is an extremely high likelihood that most long-time users of psychedelics would report at least one instance of the natural world having a profound influence on their trip in ways that defy rationality.

But before we go any further, a story.

Land Memory and Psychedelics

I work as a psychedelic therapist with MycoMeditations, a legal psilocybin retreat based in Jamaica. I’m fortunate to get detailed insights into a vast array of psychedelic experiences on an almost weekly basis.

During one retreat, a woman shared about a repetitive vision she had during her trips. She explained how, on each mushroom journey, she heard a certain kind of “tribal music”—drumming and singing in an incomprehensible language. During her third and highest dose, she found herself near a campfire glimpsing the “people” responsible for this ecstatic sound. She described them in detail, especially their uniquely pointed heads. She had no explanation for this.

As it happens, the Taino, the Indigenous people of Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, practiced what is known as “cranial shaping,” a method of elongating the skulls of their newborns. This practice, done by many Indigenous peoples of the Americas, was a distinguishing cultural marker of the Taino, who lived in greatest numbers on Jamaica’s south coast—exactly where MycoMeditations happens to be based.

In fact, the very stretch of coast where our retreats occur, an area now called Treasure Beach, is known as an archaeologically rich zone for Taino pottery, confirming this region as one of, if not the most significant ancient centers for the Jamaican Taino population.

As a colleague informed me, guests having visions of “pointy-headed people” was not something new to her. She was utterly unfazed by this seemingly inexplicable synchronicity.

What do we make of this? Despite mounting research, there is still a healthy dose of mystery lingering about these plants and molecules. To discard her experience as meaningless, or simply ‘coincidence,’ either briskly diminishes its significance and robs her of potential avenues for meaning-making—the very antithesis of psychedelic therapy and integration—or reveals something concerning about the practitioner themselves.

No psychedelic facilitator worth their salt attempts to dictate the meaning behind someone’s experience.

Depth psychology would have us take seriously these moments of exchange between the human psyche and the living earth, and encourage us to lean into these liminal crossroads of perception. For if myth and medicine tells us anything, it is that the most fertile ground for growth is where our domesticated understanding of life ends and the wild unknown of the forest begins.

The Anima Mundi and the Ensouled World

Yet, why is it that the idea of a tree or a river or a gust of wind having something to say to us is so unsettling? Why is the notion of an ‘inanimate object’ having some claim on our senses so confronting to the modern Western psyche?

Author and professor of history, Theodore Roszak, who coined the term ecopsychology (along with counterculture, interestingly enough,) wrote in his book Voice of the Earth, “If we could assume the viewpoint of nonhuman nature, what passes for sane behavior in our social affairs might seem madness. But as the prevailing reality principle would have it, nothing could be greater madness than to believe that beast and plant, mountain and river have a ‘point of view.”

To believe that the natural world has a point of view, or is ‘ensouled’, as archetypal psychologist James Hillman explored in his book, Re-Visioning Psychology, is to understand that rocks and waterfalls contain an equally relevant quality of psyche that allows for avenues of communication between our two seemingly disparate beings.

The idea that the world itself has a Soul, and is therefore an animate, even conscious being, is one of the most radical notions within the depth tradition. Carl Jung deemed this old idea the Anima Mundi: a concept with roots going far back into esoteric religious and mystical traditions such as hermeticism, gnosticism, kabbala, and of course countless Indigenous traditions across the world.

Tracing European culture’s disconnection from this ancient notion of the ensouled earth, Jung wrote in his Collected Works Volume 11, “The development of Western philosophy during the last two centuries has succeeded in isolating the mind in its own sphere and in severing it from its primordial oneness with the universe. Man himself has ceased to be the microcosm and eidolon [image] of the cosmos, and his ‘anima’ is no longer the consubstantial scintilla, spark of the Anima Mundi, World Soul.”

Embracing the notion of the Anima Mundi can help us navigate and integrate psychedelic experiences that blur the culturally constructed lines that our society would have us believe separates humanity from the living earth.

In this regard, the Anima Mundi and depth psychology asks us to question many pillars of European thought, specifically the legacy of Enlightenment thinkers like René Descartes, whose work marked a decisive turning point by cleaving apart any remaining threads of pagan belief, which connected European consciousness to the living earth.

The Research: Nature-Relatedness and Psychedelics

If generations of ceremonial plant medicine use by Indigenous people across the globe was not sufficient evidence, current research shows us that psychedelics can foster a greater sense of connectedness to the natural world. A 2019 study by Kettner et al. concluded that a sense of “nature relatedness was significantly increased 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 2 years after a psychedelic experience”, and that the frequency of lifetime psychedelic use was positively correlated to a baseline sense of nature relatedness in healthy participants.

Concluding their research, Kettner et al. wrote: “With the loss of self-referential boundaries being a defining characteristic of ego-dissolution experiences under psychedelics, as well as experiences of awe in nature, it may be that the loss of perceived boundaries between the self and the other may in turn facilitate an expanded perception of self/nature continuity or overlap, reflected by increased feelings of nature relatedness.”

This discussion of “self/nature continuity or overlap,” invokes and calls into question the legacy of Descartes mentioned above. Indeed, it places these types of psychedelic experiences squarely in the other corner from centuries of Western philosophy and worldviews. In the age of global climate collapse, the implications of this research cannot be understated.

Current research on psychedelic medicine’s potential to treat many intractable mental health issues is invaluable, to be sure. As a mental health professional, I could not be more thrilled. Yet, the research on psychedelics’ capacity to dissolve the ego and increase one’s connection to nature places these substances in direct conversation with the climate crises, which could be seen as an equally, if not even more valuable benefit of psychedelics.

Defining Anima and Animism

Many Indigenous traditions embrace what anthropologists called an “animistic” way of perception, and have woven it into their cosmologies, ceremonies, and the very fabric of their cultural belief systems. The personification of plants and places within certain Indigenous traditions, especially terms like “madre ayahuasca”, “grandfather peyote”, or “La Pastora” (one of the many Mazatec names for Salvia divinorum) plainly acknowledges that there is more going on within the earth than an “inanimate” accumulation of minerals and dirt.

From my own time spent with Indigenous peoples from many different cultures, as well as years of formal academic study in anthropology, religion, and depth psychology, this is one of the clearest messages that I’ve received: the earth does indeed have something to say to us, if only we can remember how to listen.

Indigenous ways have always been relevant to depth psychology because of this very understanding, that the earth is undeniably ensouled, living, sentient, and worthy of respect. Psychedelics can play a crucial role in helping many people remember this humble fact, and guide us down a path which, at heart, requires a style of listening, reverence, and attention which our culture has quite painfully forgotten.

Anima Mundi for Facilitators: Relationship to Place, Grief and Soul

Now would be a reasonable time to ask how any of this applies to actually working with people navigating and integrating psychedelic experiences.

To start, establishing some form of relationship to the actual land where one’s work takes place is the bare minimum. Learn about the Indigenous people of your particular place, who they are and were, and any Indigenous place names you can manage to dig up; even better if you can learn it in person from their living descendants, and cultivate a relationship with them.

The story shared at the beginning of this article would have not meant much to me if I were ignorant of the Taino people and their particular practice of shaping their skulls. Uncovering the untold story of the land, its ecological and geological timeline, and especially its history of human migration, colonization, and modernization, must factor into a holistically grounded relationship with a place.

Sitting with the raw story of a place often leads one down the dark stairwell of grief. This is a good thing. But it is wise to be prepared for it, and to know how to support others who may find themselves immersed in a story whose weight might be much more than they can bear. Grief, however, can be one of the most profound gateways to feeling, and therefore to the Soul. Psychedelic experiences which bring one face to face with land-grief are important because they are emanations from the place itself. One could say that it is one of the earth’s many attempts to speak to human beings​​—a process which we have conditioned ourselves to largely ignore. 

Finally, cultivating one’s own relationship to the natural world, to the unique curvature and temperament of a place, will inform what occurs when the mists of the otherworld begin to encircle one’s perception. Personally, before any psychedelic journey, I offer some tobacco, and ask permission from whatever ancestors called that place home. You wouldn’t just wander into someone’s house without knocking first. There are many reasons for doing this, the least of all being that it’s simply polite.

Closing Thoughts on Anima Mundi and Psychedelics

Psychedelics can provide a key to unlocking our culturally fractured and traumatized relationship to the natural world, and its indwelling Soul, the Anima Mundi. Psychedelics have the capacity to dissolve the ego and open one to experiences of awe in nature, which in turn help a sense of greater nature relatedness take root.

As individuals, we need awe-inspiring encounters with the Anima Mundi which crack open the ego and reveal the Soul. As a culture, we are in dire need of a renewed sense of reverence and respect for the more than-human-world, which psychedelics may be able to instill in our increasingly adrift society. And as ensouled beings, we need deeply personal, Soul-level encounters with something greater than ourselves, which help us remember how to listen to the language being sung all around us.

The other road, I’m sorry to say, is bleak.

The poet-philosopher Goethe knew this when he wrote, “And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.”

About the Illustrator

Martin Clarke is a British Designer and Illustrator from Nottingham, England. Specializing in branding, marketing and visual communication, Martin excels at creating bespoke brand identities and striking visual content across multiple platforms for web, social media, print and packaging. See more of his work here.

By Jasmine Virdi

Defining transpersonal psychology, exploring its history, and examining how it relates to psychedelic experiences.

Transpersonal psychology, the branch of psychology that concerns itself with the study of spiritual experience and expanded states of consciousness, has often been excluded from traditional psychology programs. However, as we traverse the reaches of the psychedelic renaissance and interest in the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness continues to grow, understanding transpersonal psychology is of growing importance.

What Is Transpersonal Psychology?

Sometimes transpersonal psychology is referred to as “spiritual psychology” or “the psychology of spirituality” in that it is the branch of psychology that concerns itself with the domain of human experience that is not limited to ordinary, waking consciousness, transcending our typically defined ego-boundaries. As a discipline, transpersonal psychology honors the existence and latent wisdom contained within non-ordinary experiences, concerning itself with unravelling the implications of their meaning for the individual, but also for the greater whole. It attempts to combine age-old insights from ancient wisdom traditions with modern Western psychology, trying to encapsulate the full spectrum of the human psyche.

Prior to the inception of transpersonal psychology, the idea that psychologists should study spirituality was unheard of. Compared with traditional psychological approaches, transpersonal psychology takes a non-pathologizing approach to spiritual experience and non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Reflecting on the origins of the discipline, psychedelic researcher and author, Dr. James Fadiman, offers, “Transpersonal psychology, in its simplest definition, is concerned with understanding the full scope of consciousness, primarily within the human species, but not limited to that which can be described easily by Western science, religious or mystical traditions, nor by Indigenous categorizations.”

“Unlike the rest of psychology, it has not attempted to use the trappings of scientific method to make it more acceptable,” Fadiman adds. “As a result, it has often been identified pejoratively as part of the “new age” counterculture, since it freely investigated states of consciousness and approaches to personal growth and development that were not being looked at by the other psychologies.”

Although Fadiman is generally more well-known for his pioneering work in microdosing, he was one of the prominent figures in shaping the early transpersonal movement. Together with psychologist Robert Frager, Fadiman co-founded the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in 1975, now known as Sofia University.

The Birth of a Spiritual Psychology

Transpersonal psychology was formally launched in 1971 by psychologists Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich. It emerged as a “Fourth Force” within psychology, with the other three forces being cognitive behaviorism, psychoanalytic/Freudian psychology, and humanistic psychology.

In the 1950s, American psychology was dominated by the schools of cognitive behaviorism and Freudian psychology, however, many felt that these approaches to understanding the human psyche were limited and this growing dissatisfaction led to the birth of humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology was closely linked to the transpersonal movement in that it was also founded by Maslow and many of the same individuals.

No longer a psychology of psychopathology, humanistic psychology concerned itself with the study of healthy individuals, focusing on human growth and potential. One of Maslow’s main qualms with behaviorism was the limitation of applying animal models to human behavior as this approach would only serve to illuminate the functions that we share with given animals. As such, he felt that behaviorism did not serve to enhance our understanding of the higher functions of our consciousness such as love, freedom, art, and beyond. Additionally, Maslow felt Freudian psychoanalysis was lacking due to its tendency to reduce the psyche to instinctual drives and draw on models of psychopathology.

Humanistic psychology attempted to take a holistic approach to human existence, concerning itself with self-actualization and the growth of love, fulfillment, and autonomy in individuals. Despite the popularity of the discipline, and the new “Human Potential Movement” that spawned around it, Maslow and others felt that there were some critical aspects lacking in humanistic psychology. Namely, the acknowledgement of the role of spirituality in people’s lives.

In 1967, a working group including the likes of Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich, Stanislav Grof, James Fadiman, Miles Vich, and Sonya Margulies met in Menlo Park, California with the aim of developing a new psychology that encapsulated the full spectrum of human experience, including non-ordinary states of consciousness. In this discussion, Stanislav Grof suggested the new discipline or Fourth Force should be called “transpersonal psychology.” Thereafter, the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology was launched in 1969, and the Association of Transpersonal Psychology was founded in 1972.

Despite the formal beginnings of transpersonal psychology in the middle of the twentieth century, the movement has its conceptual roots in the early work of William James and Carl Jung, psychologists who were mutually interested in the spiritual reaches of the human psyche. Touching upon the relevance of Jung’s contributions to the field in his book Beyond the Brain, Dr. Stanislav Grof, one of the founding fathers of transpersonal psychology and pioneer in the field of psychedelic research, described Jung as, “The first representative of the transpersonal orientation in psychology.”

William James, father of American psychology, is also perceived to be one of the founders of modern transpersonal thought, making the first recorded use of the term “trans-personal” in a 1905 lecture. However, James’ use of the term was more narrow than the way it is used today. Not only did James’ philosophy contribute to the development of transpersonal psychology, his early experimentations with psychoactive substances, in particular nitrous oxide, have also added substantially to the psychology of mystical experiences and the scientific study of consciousness.

Reflecting on his experience in The Varieties of Religious Experience, James wrote, “Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.” It is these very forms of “entirely different” consciousness that transpersonal psychology concerns itself with.

Understanding the Nature of Transpersonal Experience

The term transpersonal literally means beyond (trans) the personal, and as such, transpersonal experiences are those which serve to evaporate and transcend our ordinary, waking consciousness. Although transpersonal experiences are sometimes induced spontaneously, they can also be brought on by contact with nature, engaging in contemplative practices like meditation, sex, music, and even by difficult psychological experiences. They can take place in a variety of forms, whether it be a spontaneously induced mystical state, out-of-body or near-death experience, a unitative state elicited by psychedelics, or even an alien encounter experience.

Transpersonal experiences are inherently transformative in that they usually serve to broaden our self-conception, often providing us with a broader cosmological perspective. Take for example, the experience of ego death, or ego-dissolution as it is referred to in the scientific literature, a type of transpersonal experience that can be triggered by the use of psychedelics. In the ego death experience, the ordinary sense of self fades into an experience of unity with ultimate reality or “cosmic consciousness.”

Such experiences are both fearful and enlightening, but are thought to be one of the reasons why the psychedelic experience is so transformative for so many people. Viewed through the transpersonal lens, ego death tends to be understood as a beneficial, healing process in which an individual is able to let go of old ego structures that are no longer of service, making space for new, more integral ways of being.

Transpersonal experience is not limited to the world as we know it to exist in everyday reality. In a transpersonal experience, one might find themselves projected out of their body, viewing remote events in vivid detail or having encounters with entities from other dimensions. Describing the nature of such states in their book Spiritual Emergency, Stanislav Grof and the late Christina Grof, suggest that they include elements that western culture does not accept as objectively real, such as deities, demons, mythological figures, entities, and spirit guides. As such, they write, “In the transpersonal state, we do not differentiate between the world of “consensus reality”, or the conventional everyday world, and the mythological realm of archetypal forms.”

Such experiences facilitate a sense of harmony and meaning, connection and unity, and self-transcendence which are associated with positive effects such as heightened feelings of love and compassion. However, that is not to say that transpersonal states always have positive consequences, as they can also be incredibly destabilizing and have the ability to cause psychological distress, often referred to as a “spiritual emergenc(y)” in the transpersonal literature.

Why the Need for Transpersonal Psychology?

Science, as it stands today, is limited in its purview. Mainstream science and psychology is largely dominated by materialist approaches to consciousness and mental health. Within the materialist paradigm, matter is considered primary to consciousness, which is believed to be an accidental by-product of complex arrangements of matter. According to Fadiman, “The problem for mainstream psychology has been the unmeasurable core of transpersonal’s interest, namely, human consciousness.”

Fadiman suggests that mainstream psychology has become more and more “scientistic.” That is, it has become dogmatic in its belief that science and the materialist reductionist values that underlie it are the only way of objectively understanding reality. “Psychology is more concerned with statistical significance than personal utility, and its subject matter now includes a remarkable amount of research with animals, where their consciousness can be most easily ignored,” he shares.

Fadiman reflects that transpersonal psychology’s interest in the nature of consciousness and states of consciousness that extend beyond personal identity makes it “at its very best, the ugly stepsister that one leaves at home when going out to join material sciences parties.” Sharing an example of this, Fadiman pointed to the American Psychological Association’s refusal to grant accreditation to a transpersonal graduate school.

“This was not because of the quality of its dissertations which were rated quite highly or for the span and variety of its courses nor because of the financial status of the institution,” Fadiman continues. Rather, “It was turned down solely on the basis of its fundamental subject matter.” In essence, it boils down to the question of materialism, as many transpersonal psychologists believe in some form or another that consciousness cannot be explained by processes of the brain alone.

Further, Grof describes the dominant scientific perspective as “ethnocentric” in that “it has been formulated and promoted by Western materialistic scientists, who consider their own perspective to be superior to that of any other human group at any time of history.” However, he suggests that transpersonal psychology, on the other hand, has made significant advances in remedying the ethnocentric biases of mainstream science through its cultural sensitivity towards the spiritual traditions of ancient and native cultures, the acknowledgement of the ontological reality of transpersonal experiences, and their value.

The Relevance of Transpersonal Psychology in the Psychedelic Renaissance

The resurgence of interest in the medical, psychological, and transformational benefits of psychedelics has naturally generated increased awareness of transpersonal states and their value for the health of the human psyche. When it comes to the study of spirituality and non-ordinary states of consciousness, transpersonal psychology has long paved the way, validating the veracity and psychological benefits of such states. As such, it offers itself as an important reservoir of knowledge when trying to understand the healing potentials of psychedelics within therapeutic contexts, but also when trying to understand their broader socio-cultural implications.

In spite of not being widely recognized, transpersonal psychology has long led the scientific endeavor to understand the totality of the human psyche through its embrace of non-ordinary states of consciousness that have hitherto been dismissed as “psychotic” or merely “hallucinations” by mainstream science. Fadiman explains that transpersonal psychology continues to take seriously and without judgment the results reported by individuals working with psychedelics. “For example, almost all indigenous cultures who have used psychedelics for hundreds perhaps thousands of years report that as one’s consciousness expands beyond the perimeters of the identity, that there are other beings, other realms of existence which are met, often across cultures with identical descriptions,” says Fadiman.

The conceptual frameworks of the dominant model are inadequate when it comes to understanding non-ordinary experiences, including those elicited by psychedelics. As such, Fadiman suggests that, “As we continue to develop more accurate maps of inner space, it is likely that transpersonal psychology, with its emphasis on subjective as well as objective observation will continue to play a prominent role.”

This article was updated on July 19, 2021 to correct the years the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and Association of Transpersonal Psychology were founded.

About the Author

Jasmine Virdi is a freelance writer in the psychedelic space. Since 2018, she has been working for the fiercely independent publishing company Synergetic Press, where her passions for ecology, ethnobotany, and psychoactive substances converge. Jasmine has written for Psychedelics Today, Chacruna Institute for Plant Medicines, Lucid News, Cosmic Sister, Psychable, and Microdosing Guru. She is currently pursuing an MSc in Spirituality, Consciousness, and Transpersonal Psychology at the Alef Trust with the future aim of working as a psychedelic practitioner. Jasmine’s goal as an advocate for psychoactive substances is to raise awareness of the socio-historical context in which these substances emerged in order to help integrate them into our modern-day lives in a safe, ethically-integral, and meaningful way.