Project summary

Beyond Pathology: Expert Consensus on the Intersection of Emergent Experiences and Mental and Medical Conditions

Last year, we started something amazing. Now, we need your help to bring it to the public.

Our project is called the Expert Opinion Project. It aims to advance mental health and psychiatry by introducing traditional and indigenous understanding of spiritual experiences into the Western medical model. Our research team has been working on this issue for more than a decade. Last summer, we finally secured the necessary manpower and funding to move forward.

As many people—and their loved ones—are aware, despite extremely positive benefits overall, even gentle exploration with psychedelic compounds or even attending a meditation retreat can sometimes have unexpected psychological effects. People often hesitate to share these experiences with their doctors and care practitioners because they fear being stigmatized. Sometimes, these experiences can spiral out of control and ruin lives. With this project, we want to start a change.

How many people do you know who have questioned whether they are undergoing a spiritual awakening or struggling with something that could be dangerous, such as schizophrenia or a bipolar disorder? We are here to share crucial insights about the importance of these nuances. We find it incredibly important to preserve the dignity of people who don’t necessarily need to be pathologised and/or medicated just because we don’t understand what’s happening to them.

To do this, we have recruited over 20 top experts who work at the intersection of what we call “emergent phenomenology” (spiritual, mystical, magical, psychedelic, weird, non-local, acausal—you name it!) and psychiatric and psychopathological conditions. They are helping us reach expert consensus by tackling deep questions all the way from safe clinical encounters, necessary clinical skillsets such as what having an open and nonjudgemental mind truly means, to suggested additions for mainstream psychiatric textbooks such as the DSM or ICD.

Ultimately, we aim at reforming how these experiences are understood and approached in clinical care settings, creating training programs and board certificates that will enable us to enter an era in which all of the strange and unexplainable experiences will be supported through their proper integration and not shying away. We want the scientific community to know about our work and to join us in making the world a safer place.

Feeling extremely lucky, we are thrilled that our submission has been accepted for presentation at the ASSC Conference this July in Crete. However, our non-profit spent all of the project money to finance us and pay our wonderful experts, which is why we need your help to get to the conference.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

We are engaging researchers and clinicians with expertise in both clinical/medical and traditional/contemplative domains to identify key assessment criteria, treatment strategies, and systemic barriers to effective care of people experiencing "emergent phenomenology," such as ontological shocks or trying to get grounded after intense spiritual or emotional insights.

Ultimately, this work aims to develop consensus clinical guidelines for recognizing and supporting emergent phenomenology in clinical contexts. Future phases will expand participation to include cultural leaders, integration specialists, and individuals with lived experience, ensuring guidelines balance clinical rigor with cultural sensitivity and practical utility. The project has been going great!

How will this funding be used?

There are two of us on the team and our goal is to cover basic costs:
ASSC Registration: 2 x 550 EUR
Accommodation: 600 EUR
Travel costs: 2 x 200 EUR
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One person: 1.350,00 EUR
Together: 2.100,00 EUR

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

My name is Beata and I’m the author of the blog Thoughts on Evolutions (www.thingsiwasntsupposedtotalkabout.com—which is why I ended up researching all of this), as well as the upcoming book called The Good Annealing Manual: From Psychedelic Alchemy to the Chemistry of the Mind that I wrote for the Californian Qualia Research Institute. As an independent researcher, I focus on understanding the oscillatory dynamics of consciousness and building the music theory of consciousness. Drawing on my personal experiences with emergent phenomenology, one of the things that drives my research is to understand what love is and how we can tune ourselves into a more equanimous and compassionate key by working with our attention.

I'm Hannah, a consciousness researcher with a recent PhD in psychology. My own journey with unusual consciousness states (including what I believe was Shaktipat—an energetic transmission) that profoundly altered my awareness has fuelled my commitment to creating frameworks that honour both scientific rigour and the mystery of emergent experiences. I believe much can be gained by translating between worlds that rarely communicate. As Co-Principal Investigator on this project, I'm aiming to bring transformative spiritual experiences into the clinical and scientific mainstream, but this work isn't just academic for me. I've witnessed both the life-changing potential and the very real risks of these experiences, and I believe we need a new clinical approach that preserves the dignity and depth of what I consider sacred experiences.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

If this crowdfunding project fails, we will fail to inform hundreds of visitors at one of the largest conferences on the science of consciousness about the need for advancing the way we talk about and treat strange psychological experiences that sometimes lead to fatal consequences.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

We haven't been raising money elsewhere yet.