Pushkin

Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. I don't want to spoil the illusion, but the life of the podcast hosts often is pretty far from glamorous.

Normally, I record this show in my closet, surrounded by pillows and mattresses to keep out all the noise of the trains that run by my Boston apartment.

But not today. The Happiness Lab has hit the road. And what a venue we've come to. The sixth and I historic synagogue in Washington, DC.

Not only do we have a beautiful venue and a great crowd, but bringing the Happiness Lab live show to DC also allowed me to book a guest that I have been wanting to interview for a long time.

Our guest today is Dr. David Yaden. David is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

David did his doctoral training in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he explored which mental states and interventions led to lasting positive impacts on our happiness and well-being.

Since starting his own lab, he's begun studying the psychology of states of consciousness that most people think of as among the most meaningful moments in their lives.

Specifically, he's a world expert on what we often refer to as spiritual, transformative, or self-transcendent experiences, including those that come from the use of psychedelic substances.

And he's recently co-authored a book called The Varieties of Spiritual Experience, 21st century research and perspectives.

You are in for such a big treat listening to David today because I think of him as the 21st century embodiment of a scholar that I love, William James, who you're going to hear more about today.

And so for all these reasons, I'm so so glad that David accepted my invitation to be part of our first ever DC Happiness Lab Live with us.

Please join me in giving a warm welcome to David Yaden.

So David, as I mentioned in my introduction, you study these experiences that people report to be some of the most important moments of their lives, but we kind of have very little scientific information about these transcendent experiences.

And so I wanted to just start off with some definitions. What do we mean by spiritual experiences here?

Yeah, these experiences go under many labels. So you've mentioned a few self-transcendent, transformative, mystical, and spiritual experience.

We chose spiritual experience for the book because we ran a survey and we asked people, what do you call these experiences in spiritual one? So we stuck it in the book.

But we do offer a definition. It's a two-parter. The spiritual experience is a substantially altered state of consciousness that involves a seeming perception of an unseen order of some kind.

So let me break that down.

First, substantially altered state of consciousness. So this is an overall shift in cognition, affect, and perception.

So we feel qualitatively different than normal. We know something has changed for our ordinary waking consciousness.

But that's very broad. That happens in all kinds of different ways. Feevers, falling asleep, etc.

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