Alex Sielaff on mystical experiences, existential isolation, and meaning
Alex is a social psychology PhD student at the University Arizona, where he is also minoring in clinical psychology and science education. Alex received his MA there as well, and his BA in psychology from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Prior to psychology research, Alex earned his Associates in Applied Science in Engineering Systems Technology and served in the US Air Force as a computer network engineer. Alex currently collaborates with Dr. Jeff Greenberg in his terror management research lab, studying how the human awareness of mortality impacts human behavior in myriad ways. His specific interests are in learning more about how mystical experiences, often occasioned by psychedelics, might change one’s relationship with death or change the way it impacts one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Alex is also passionate about science journalism and teaching psychological science to a non-academic audience.
Alex on the web: Lab Website | LinkedIn | Research Gate
By Kenneth Vail, Cleveland State University. November 21, 2022.
ISSEP: How did you first become aware of and interested in existentialism and existential psychology?
The TV show Cosmos—the original with Carl Sagan (1980) and the recent reboot with Neil DeGrasse Tyson (2014)—have each won Emmy and Peabody awards and are among the most-watched shows on PBS and National Geographic, respectively.
Alex Sielaff: Well, after high school I went into the US Air Force and served for a few years as a computer network engineer. But, somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to leave the military and do something else with my life. I didn’t know exactly what that would be, but I knew I wanted to use my GI Bill. So, I volunteered for deployment and went to Qatar, to get a bit of space from the rest of my life and spend some time thinking about possibilities for starting fresh when I got back. While I was there, I came across the show Cosmos—the original with Carl Sagan (1980) and the recent reboot with Neil DeGrasse Tyson (2014)—and it re-ignited my love for science. That’s when I decided I wanted to go through the process of getting my Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD because I wanted a career doing scientific research; it just seemed like such a beautiful way to give back to society.
I narrowed it down to astrophysics and social psychology because I was interested in big world-level problems like global warming, which is both a technological and a human problem. But ultimately it struck me that the physics of it, and the technological solutions to resolve the problem, was actually the easy part. The more complex problem was that humans don’t implement the solutions! They cling to outdated and narrow-minded beliefs, values, and behaviors that pose hazards, and with such conviction that it sometimes seems impossible to get them to adopt new worldviews and change their behaviors. I wanted to learn more about why, and what could be done about it.
So, at 27 years old, I started my undergraduate in psychology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. While I was there, I took a social psychology class taught by Dr. Tom Pyszcyznski. The class was excellent and I often stayed after class or went to office hours to ask him questions and talk about things. Eventually, he started asking me questions, such as what I was hoping to do with my degree. He invited me to join his research lab, which is where I learned about terror management theory, specifically, and the science of existential psychology, broadly. It turned out to be in perfect alignment with what I was looking for—trying to better understand why people are so committed to their core beliefs—and does so by looking at complex existential issues inherent in the human condition.
ISSEP: You’ve been doing some great work studying mystical experiences, existential isolation, and meaning in life. Can you tell us more about your research?
Alex Sielaff: Well, the sense of existential isolation is when you become more strongly aware of the “unbridgeable gap” between your own mind and the rest of the world—it’s the feeling that you might not be a fully integrated “part” of the world along with the people and things around you, and the awareness that you are alone in your experiences and cannot “check” other people’s raw experiences to verify your interpretation of the truth and reality. One implication is that, if it’s difficult to see yourself as an integrated “part” of the world around you and to consensually validate your experience of reality, it might also be difficult to see the world as coherent or to feel your life has significance or purpose. And, sure enough, previous existential psychology research has found that existential isolation is often correlated with an impaired sense of meaning in life.
But I thought this relationship might not occur among people who’ve had mystical experiences. Mystical experiences are those that feel like they transcend time and space, like they facilitate “new” ways of understanding the world, and like they cause that change in an ineffable way (you can’t easily verbalize/articulate it). Most famously, mystical experiences can sometimes occur while using psychedelics, but they can also happen spontaneously, or they might be induced from any number of other activities or events such as breathwork, ritual, or religious activities. These kinds of mystical experiences are thought to “relax” the structure of your beliefs about the world. You still process concrete information (e.g., you can look at briefcase and still understand it’s a briefcase), but your mind no longer strictly imposes its familiar structural view of the world in its abstract understanding of how that information fits into your life more broadly. Instead, your typical understanding about how things are meaningfully connected/associated with each other is wiped away, and you can put the pieces of the puzzle back together in different ways—potentially resulting in a totally different view of yourself and the world around you. Thus, I thought people who’ve had mystical experiences have probably constructed their own sense of meaning in life—a coherent view of the world, with a sense of purpose and significance—regardless of whether they felt existentially isolated or not.
To test that idea, my colleagues and I (Sielaff et al., 2022) quantitatively measured the sense of existential isolation by asking participants to rate their agreement (1 = Disagree, 7 = Agree) with a set of six survey items, such as “People often have the same perspective on things that I do.” Lower scores indicate existential isolation, whereas higher scores indicate existential connection. Then, we quantitatively measured whether participants have had mystical experiences, by asking them to indicate whether they’ve ever had an experience that involved any of the phenomena listed below and, if so, to check all that applied:
Felt that the experience cannot be described adequately in words.
Felt a unity or bond with what was felt to be greater than your personal self.
Felt that you experienced “eternity” or “infinity.”
Felt that you gained insightful knowledge at an intuitive level.
Felt a loss of your usual sense of space.
Felt a loss of your usual sense of time.
Felt like your sense of perception was originating from somewhere outside your body.
Felt a strong sense of peace and tranquility.
Experienced the insight that “all is one.”
Participants who reported at least 60% of these phenomena were categorized as “Yes, mystical experience” and those with fewer were categorized as “No mystical experience.” Lastly, we quantitatively measured the sense of meaning in life by asking participants to rate their agreement (1 = Disagree, 7 = Agree) with a set of five survey items, such as “I understand my life’s meaning.”
Among the participants who had not had a mystical experience, existential isolation was negatively associated with meaning in life, which replicated the prior research. But, sure enough, those who’d had a mystical experience maintained a constant level of meaning in life regardless of their sense of existential isolation or connection.
Left three: Curanderos doing traditional medicine. Right three: Clinical psychedelic therapy.
ISSEP: In what ways can your work help us make sense of important human experiences, better understand important events, or inform our cultural and technological trends?
Alex Sielaff: I think this research can help us better understand the desire to cultivate mystical experiences in thoughtful ways, because it seems to help facilitate a more intrinsic and self-determined sense of meaning in life that’s less susceptible to the vagaries of existential isolation from the outside world. This goes all the way back to ancient indigenous and wisdom traditions from many cultural practices, with a shaman or a curandero, and extends up to contemporary therapeutic techniques involving psychologists and psychiatrists. Such individuals play a fundamental role, called “holding space,” to help direct the experience in a positive direction.
For example, in clinical trials in the US and Europe, the therapist will meet with the client for 8+ hours prior to the high dose psychedelic session day. The goal is to get to know the client, develop trust, and understand their current worldview, beliefs, and past experiences. During the high dose session, the therapist serves as a safety net while the client experiences their beliefs about the world “relaxing” and then falling away. After the session, the therapist and client begin an “integration” period, during which they work on picking up the pieces and integrating them back into their lives in ways the client finds intrinsically meaningful.
ISSEP: Do you see any interesting connections between your work and the arts, humanities, or pop culture?
Alex Sielaff: One great example is from The Matrix. In the film, Neo takes a pill that helps him “relax” and then completely shed his pre-existing understandings of truth and reality. Then, the first time he was on the Nebuchadnezzar in the "real" world, he felt a sense of groundlessness, threw up, and passed out because his prior understanding of the world was so dramatically dismantled. Morpheus, Trinity, and the others serve as his community of supportive therapists, so to speak, and help him to take what he learned through his mystical experience and integrate it into his life in new and intrinsically meaningful ways.
Clockwise from top left: Morpheus offers Neo the blue and red pills; Neo takes the red pill which leads him to see the world in completely new ways; the Beatles visit India and stay at Maharishi Mahesh yogi’s ashram in 1968; George Harrison learned from and collaborated with sitarist Ravi Shankar.
Another broad example is the historic and wide-spread role various mystical experiences have played in musical creativity. Imagine being George Harrison, member of The Beatles, having grown up in England during the mid 1900s. You would have been exposed to the various songs, tunes, and styles popular in Western Europe and Britain—from Handel and Mozart to jazz and early rock-and-roll. You might be inclined to innovate a bit, but perhaps only to the extent that it remained popular. Otto Rank called this the “dual ontological motive,” which essentially involved a dance around existential isolation—the motive to creatively strike out on one’s own but also to remain connected as part of the group and to maintain consensual validation of one’s interpretations of truth and reality. But you became successful and it’s the ‘60s. So, let’s say you began using psychedelics, you travel and explore Indian music and philosophy, and repeatedly have supportive friends guide you through mystical experiences that help you to “relax” your beliefs about music, religion, and the world. To the extent that you integrate your new understandings into your life in ways that are intrinsically meaningful to you, you’ll be able to confidently pursue more distinctive and unique creative output without being particularly impacted by existential isolation concerns. The result might be songs like “Love to you” (1966), “Within you without you” (1967), and “The inner light” (1968), which weren’t terribly popular but were incredibly unique and creative works of musical fusion.
ISSEP: How did you develop your interests in this topic area?
Alex Sielaff: Well, I had generally followed the rules when I was younger and when I was in the military, so there were a lot of things I hadn’t done before. So after I got out of the military, I moved to Colorado and started to enjoy the freedoms that came with the return to civilian life. I grew out my beard, spent time exploring the Rockies, and because it’s legal there I also tried marijuana for the first time. It was nothing like what the D.A.R.E. Program had taught us in school; my friends were knowledgeable, supportive, and safe about it and it was a really pleasant experience. So, that opened me up to wonder what else I had been misled about in the D.A.R.E. Program. I didn’t just run out and start trying all the drugs, or anything like that, but I did start learning about them in a more open-minded way. Eventually I learned about the emerging research on psychedelics, including their effects on well-being and personal growth and their use in treating a lot of different mental health conditions.
At that time, it was just a passing curiosity. But then I entered grad school, and I mentioned it in passing a few times with some of the faculty and other students because I thought the associated experiences might impact existential psychological concerns, and eventually people suggested I start discussing it more seriously with some faculty here—psychologist John Allen and psychiatrist Francisco Moreno—who are studying the effects of psilocybin to treat anxiety-related disorders such as OCD. Around the same time, I was visiting Peru to participate in a 16-day retreat that immersed me in indigenous ancestral wisdom traditions which included ayahuasca, San Pedro, and breathwork ceremonies. My experiences there helped me produce some important insights about mystical experiences and further fueled my research interest in the topic. Since then, I’ve become quite involved in the field; I’m currently the Director for Research and Professional Development for the Intercollegiate Psychedelics Network. So learning about these experiences has really grown from a passing interest to my life’s passion.
ISSEP: You’ve attended, and presented research at, our Existential Psychology preconference; how has your experience been with that?
“The Existential Psychology Preconference has been my favorite part of the SPSP conference every year I’ve attended”
Alex Sielaff: The Existential Psychology Preconference has been my favorite part of the SPSP conference every year I’ve attended. I’m interested in so much more of what’s going on there, it’s all relevant to the research I’m doing here, and it’s great to hear about how people are thinking about these sorts of things. Even when it was virtual, during the pandemic, I’ve still really enjoyed it. For example, the organizers limited the number of posters being presented, to reduce the number of break-out rooms for each poster presentation thereby ensuring a good flow through to each poster. With my own posters, that meant my work still got a lot of attention with people popping in to chat about my research and come together to share new ideas. It felt both comfortable and stimulating—like a productive coffee shop meeting with so many brilliant colleagues around the world.
ISSEP: Can you tell us a little about yourself outside the research context?
Alex Sielaff: I’m from the north; grew up in Wisconsin. I’m pretty active and adventurous. I love being outside, doing what I suppose some might call high adrenaline activities. Snowboarding is my favorite passion in life right now, and I teach snowboarding too. Another one of my favorite hobbies is skydiving, and I was also a skydiving coach at various times in my life some years ago. I also like canoeing, camping, and backpacking for multi-day expeditions. Likewise, I’ve also gotten into road-trips and have recently converted my SUV for 6-8 week touring trips. I just love to get out in nature—surrounded by the trees, water, and especially the mountains—and feel that sense of adventure and to experience new things.
ISSEP: What is one piece of advice you would give to future students who have an interest in following in your footsteps?
Alex Sielaff: The advice I like to give is to follow your passions. If you’re coming into existential psychology, and see connections to topics that draw your attention, follow those. If your program has a lot of requirements, boxes to check, and hurdles to jump, see if you can integrate your passions into those efforts. If it can’t be done, then spend the extra time to check the boxes in addition to building experience engaging your passions on the side. In academia, a lot of our efforts are toward things we’re required to do—teaching, statistics, dealing with “reviewer 2” or the cranky colleague down the hall. But it becomes much easier to look past all those dull spots if navigating them is in the service of being able to do what you truly love. Like anything else in life—this ride will have it’s share of downs, so make sure it has ups too.
ISSEP: A lot of us like to listen to music in the lab; what are you listening to lately?
Alex Sielaff: In grad school, I learned I like different kinds of music for different occasions. When I’m studying, I generally listen to things that help me stay focused and don’t interfere with my own thoughts. For example, one great album for that is Voodoo to Zen, by Tides from Nebula. When I’m doing statistics, I typically listen to heavy metal—like the Hypernova album, by The Browning—because it’s intense and the extra energy helps me pay attention to all the minut statistical details over long periods of time. When I’m out on a road trip I’ll listen to more upbeat stuff, like The Hip Abduction; it’s got some island vibes and is great for driving long distance, sunroof down, enjoying the day. Another great artist is Poranguí; his music is really good for medicine ceremony type settings, dance, and getting into a bit of a trance like state. But my favorite band of all time, since I was a kid, is Tool. One of their songs, Forty Six & 2, is about looking at the world through Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow—the unconscious aspect of the personality that doesn’t correspond with one’s ego-ideal—which I think is super interesting.