MEQ-30
A secure and research-based space to reflect on psychedelic experiences, explore their mystical dimensions, and keep a private journal.
LOG AND ASSESS YOUR MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES
MEQ-30 Assessment and Experience Journal
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WHAT IS MEQ-30 ASSESSMENT AND EXPERIENCE JOURNAL?
The journal you see here is a secure, private space designed to help you reflect on and learn more about your own experiences using the MEQ-30. It allows you to record experiences, complete the questionnaire, and view a research-informed interpretation of how your experience aligns with the four mystical experience dimensions.
This tool is not a diagnostic instrument, a therapeutic assessment, or a judgment about the value or meaning of your experience. Experiences can be deeply significant in many ways, whether or not they meet formal research conventions for a “Mystical Experience”. The purpose of this journal is reflection, understanding, and careful description; not classification for its own sake.
WAS MY EXPERIENCE MYSTICAL?
I had a profound experience, but…
This is a question many people find themselves asking after a profound psychedelic or entheogenic experience. In recent years, interest in this question has grown alongside renewed scientific research into psychedelic substances and the kinds of experiences they can occasion. Some studies suggest that experiences described as mystical-type are associated with longer-term changes in meaning, wellbeing, or outlook in certain research contexts; but these findings raise an important follow-up question: what does “mystical” actually mean, and how can it be assessed?
FROM PHILOSOPHY TO MEASUREMENT
How mystical experience is defined?
Modern research on mystical experience builds on a long intellectual history. Early descriptions by thinkers such as William James emphasized recurring features reported across cultures, including a sense of unity, a feeling of encountering profound insight or truth, a sense of sacredness, and the difficulty of putting the experience fully into words.
In the mid-twentieth century, these qualitative insights were translated into empirical research tools. Beginning with work by Walter Pahnke and later refined by subsequent researchers, these efforts led to the development of standardized questionnaires designed to assess mystical-type experiences in a careful and replicable way.
One such instrument (the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: MEQ-30) is now widely used in contemporary research settings, including studies conducted at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University. The MEQ-30 does not determine whether an experience is spiritually “true” or personally meaningful; rather, it offers a structured way to describe how closely an experience aligns with a specific research-based profile of mystical experience.
THE FOUR DIMENSIONS MEASURED BY THE MEQ-30
Mystical Experience Questionnaire
The MEQ-30 evaluates experiences across four dimensions that repeatedly appear in scholarly descriptions of mystical experience:
Sense of Unity, Noetic Quality, and Sacredness
This dimension captures feelings of deep connectedness or unity, the sense that the experience conveyed profound insight or knowledge, and the perception that it held special or sacred significance.
Transcendence of Time and Space
This dimension refers to alterations in the usual experience of time and space, such as a sense that time slowed, stopped, or lost its ordinary structure.
Positive Mood
This dimension reflects the presence of positive emotional states, such as peace, joy, or a sense of emotional openness, during the experience.
Ineffability
This dimension captures the extent to which the experience felt difficult to express in ordinary language; often described as “beyond words.”
Together, these dimensions form the basis for how mystical-type experiences are described and compared in contemporary research.
Psychedelic (from the Greek psyche, “mind,” and deloun, “to reveal”) and entheogenic (“generating the divine within”) substances are terms used in research and scholarship to describe certain psychoactive compounds that can occasion altered states of consciousness. In contemporary studies, such states are characterized by temporary changes in perception, emotion, cognition, and sense of self relative to ordinary waking awareness.
Examples examined in modern research include substances such as psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, and DMT. Their mention here is descriptive and contextual, not prescriptive.
A NOTE ON PSYCHEDELIC AND ENTHEOGENIC EXPERIENCES
Reports of mystical-type experiences have become especially prominent in the context of the contemporary “psychedelic renaissance.” Clinical and experimental studies have shown that psychedelic and entheogenic substances can reliably occasion altered states of consciousness; temporary changes in perception, emotion, sense of self, and meaning that differ from ordinary waking awareness. Within these altered states, experiences resembling those historically described as mystical appear more frequently than in everyday life.
Outside of such contexts, experiences described as mystical are comparatively rare and are often associated with many years of sustained contemplative, religious, or meditative practice. This contrast has made researchers increasingly interested in how to systematically describe and measure these experiences when they do occur.
WHY EXPERIENCING MYSTICISM HAS BECOME MORE COMMON
REFERENCES
The references listed here are provided for contextual and scholarly transparency and do not imply endorsement of any particular interpretation, practice, or outcome.
James, W. (1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.→ Foundational philosophical account of mystical experience, identifying core characteristics such as ineffability, noetic quality, and unity.Pahnke, W. N., & Richards, W. A. (1966). Implications of LSD and experimental mysticism. Journal of Religion and Health, 5(3), 175–208.→ Early empirical work operationalizing mystical experience and laying the groundwork for later questionnaire-based measurement.Griffiths, R. R., Richards, W. A., McCann, U., & Jesse, R. (2006). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 187(3), 268–283.→ Demonstrates that psychedelic experiences can occasion mystical-type experiences under controlled conditions and that such experiences may be associated with enduring personal significance.MacLean, K. A., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2011). Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(11), 1453–1461.→ Reports associations between mystical-type experiences and longer-term psychological changes in specific research contexts.Barrett, F. S., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2015). Validation of the revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire in experimental sessions with psilocybin. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 29(11), 1182–1190.→ Validation of the MEQ-30 and its four-factor structure; establishes the ≥60% criterion across subscales for defining a “complete” mystical-type experience in research settings.Ko, K., et al. (2023). Mystical-type experiences and mental health outcomes in naturalistic psychedelic use. Psychedelic Medicine, 1(1).→ Examines associations between mystical-type experiences and mental health-related outcomes in non-laboratory contexts, emphasizing correlation rather than causation.
MEQ-30 Assessment and Experience Journal
MEQ-30 Assessment and Experience Journal is a research instrument used in academic studies and does not constitute clinical or medical advice.
All user entries are private and securely stored.
Created by S. Shabani, Doctoral Student, University of Ottawa, Canada.