Spirituality enhancement

Spirituality enhancement can be described as the experience of a shift in a person’s personal beliefs regarding their existence and place within the universe, their relationship to others, and what they value as meaningful in life. It results in a person rethinking the significance they place on certain key concepts, holding some in higher regard than they did previously, and dismissing others as less important.^[1] These concepts and notions are not limited to but generally include:

• An increased sense of personal purpose.^[2]
• An increased interest in the pursuit of developing personal religious and spiritual ideologies.^[3][4]
  • The formation of complex personal religious beliefs.
• An increased sense of compassion towards nature and other people.^[3][4][5]
• An increased sense of unity and interconnectedness between oneself, nature, "god", and the universe as a whole.^{[1][3][5][6][7][8][9]}
• A decreased sense of value placed upon money and material objects.^[5]
• A decreased fear and greater acceptance of death and the finite nature of existence.^{[1][10][11][12]}

Although difficult to fully specify due to the subjective aspect of spirituality enhancement, these changes in to a person's belief system can often result in profound changes in a person's personality^[5][7][13] which can sometimes be distinctively noticeable to the people around those who undergo it. This shift can occur suddenly but will usually increase gradually over time as a person repeatedly uses the psychoactive substance which is inducing it.

Spirituality enhancement is unlikely to be an isolated effect component but rather the result of a combination of an appropriate setting^[3] in conjunction with other coinciding effects such as analysis enhancement, autonomous voice communication, novelty enhancement, perception of interdependent opposites, perception of predeterminism, perception of self-design, personal bias suppression, and unity and interconnectedness. It is most commonly induced under the influence of moderate dosages of psychedelic compounds, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. However, it can also occur to a lesser extent under the influence of dissociatives, such as ketamine, PCP, and DXM.

Analysis

There have been a number of in-depth scientific studies which unanimously support the legitimate existence of the spiritual effects induced by hallucinogen usage.^{[1][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]}

Frequently, new psychedelic users rate their experience to be either the single most meaningful experience of their life or among the top five most meaningful experiences of their life.^{[4][6][10][13]}

Any psychedelic or hallucinogen intentionally used for religious or spiritual purposes is known in the literature as an entheogen.^[3][22] The ritualized usage of entheogens for religious or spiritual purposes dates back thousands of years and is well established throughout both anthropological and modern evidence.^{[3][4][5][13][17][19][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]}