How Psychedelic, Religious, Spiritual, Mystical Experiences Become Effective

The concept of efficacy in religious practices, such as intercessory prayer and healing rituals, is grounded in both theory and individual experience. It involves causality, belief, and intentionality, and is examined through predictive mind and embodied cognition, relating to how religions construct the 'really real'. The paper explores how people acquire or abandon beliefs based on apparent evidence, drawing on placebo research, ritual theory, aesthetics of religion, and cognitive science. Aesthetic categories like aestheticscapes, time perception, absorption, ritual enactment, evaluation, synchronous speech, and tool use are used to understand components of efficacy, including belief systems as expectations, prediction precision, familiarity with healing narratives, healer charisma, and collective alignment.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract The concept of “efficacy” is dually grounded in theory and in individual experience. On the one hand, it is a key issue in many religious practices, from intercessory prayer to healing rituals. On the other hand, the concept concerns causality, belief, and intentionality and is here localized within recent discussions of predictive mind and embodied cognition and related to the construction of the “really real” within religions. The practices of gaining a new conviction, sensing a healing energy, or synchronizing heart rates raise the important question of how we come to have beliefs or give them up according to apparent evidence. Religions set frameworks for those processes whose underlying cognitive and psychophysiological mechanisms, as well as cultural aesthetic strategies, are elaborated against the background of placebo research, ritual theory, aesthetics of religion, and the cognitive study of religion. Basic aesthetic categories—like aestheticscapes, time perception, absorption, ritual enactment, evaluation, synchronous speech, and tool use—are expounded on to improve our understanding of components of efficacy, like, for example, the role of belief systems as expectations and prediction precision estimates, familiarity with the healing narrative, charisma of the healer, and collective alignment.