One of the most fascinating and mysterious aspects of the psychedelic experience is the entity encounter. People who take psychedelics sometimes describe encounters with beings who seem to be sentient and who are often described as being ‘realer than real’. These beings have been referred to as ‘guides’, ‘spirits’, ‘aliens’, ‘helpers’, ‘angels’, ‘elves’, and ‘plant spirits’ (e.g. Davis et al., 2020). What could be the purpose of entity encounters? In modern Western culture we don’t really have a framework for understanding such experiences. Contemporary mainstream culture tends to view ‘esoteric’ or ‘paranormal’ experiences as fringe, fraudulent and unscientific. Experiences such as seeing visions of others or hearing voices are usually relegated to the domain of psychiatry.

But a close examination of people’s psychedelic entity encounters reveals that there may be great value in such experiences. In a recent article published with the Journal of Psychedelic Studies, I argue that psychedelic entity encounters may have therapeutic potential. In fact, a number of qualitative studies and anecdotal reports suggest that entity encounters can have profound and lasting positive after-effects for those who experience them.

Personal and Transpersonal Insight

Interestingly, psychedelic entities often communicate with people. They frequently answer questions or volunteer information. For example, in a recent survey study that looked at entity encounter experiences (n = 2561), more than two-thirds of respondents (69%) said they had received a message, task, mission, purpose, or insight from the entity encounter experience. Sometimes these messages are personal and relate to psychological understanding. For example, Heuser (2006, p. 68) studied ayahuasca entity encounters and found that:

non-human entities were at times found to express human emotions of love and concern for human welfare. Entities sometimes guided reporters to clarity and integration, which was often attained after contemplating difficult problems or dark themes.

Entities might also provide information of a metaphysical or transpersonal nature (e.g. information regarding the workings of the universe). Another participant in Heuser’s study (2006, p. 56) reported:

I then was given the understanding that all life, all we know, all I am, is energy, this energy is timeless and will continue on. I knew now the reality of this time and space is just something my energy has chosen to reside in for now.

While we can’t know for sure whether this type of information is accurate or reliable, transpersonal messages often provide a sense of comfort or reassurance for the receiver.

Encounters with the Divine

Encounters with divine entities, such as angels or other celestial beings, often produce strong feelings of wonder and awe. The following is a description (from the work of Andy Letcher) of an encounter with ‘angels’ after ingesting psilocybin-containing mushrooms:

I’m not into angels or any of that stuff. But these beings I encountered, I think they’re fucking angels [laughs]. They were so immense and awe-inspiring and terrifying and powerful … you can’t explain it … [they had] ninety thousand million facets to them and then one point they’d be grotesque with like these hundreds of tongues and mouths and eyes and then they’d just grow these god heads and I kind of experienced them as vortexes of deep power, divine vortexes of energy and … the only model that I could ascribe to them was an angelic being … they were quite terrifying but it was so beautiful as well and I felt deeply honoured … a touch of the gods …

Recent research from psychology suggests that the experience of awe – the feeling evoked by being in the presence of something vast that transcends current frames of reference – can have beneficial effects on wellbeing and can trigger a sense of ‘smallness’ of the self in relation to the greater world (e.g. Piff et al., 2015). While research on awe is a relatively new area, such studies support the idea that awe-inspiring entity encounters might have beneficial after-effects – perhaps by re-connecting us to the vast mysteries of consciousness.

‘Magic Operations’

Perhaps most mysteriously, psychedelic entities are said to be able to physically interact with humans. One example is the ‘magic operation’ or ‘psychic surgery.’ There are numerous intriguing reports of people being operated on by entities. Possibly the most well-known examples come from Rick Strassman’s clinical study of DMT (Strassman 2001, p.199). In his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule, he writes:

Volunteers find themselves on a bed or in a landing bay, research environment, or high-technology room. The highly intelligent beings of this “other” world are interested in the subject, seemingly ready for his or her arrival and waste no time in “getting to work” … Their “business” appeared to be testing, examining, probing, and even modifying the volunteer’s mind and body … The purpose of contact was uncertain, but several subjects felt a benevolent attempt on the beings’ part to improve us individually or as a race.

In a study of ‘changa’ (a DMT/MAOI-infused smoking blend), Gaia (2016, p. 62) also reports an example of an entity encounter that resulted in a real-world physical change. Her informant, Fredo:

Became convinced that some alien intelligence had reprogrammed him during a changa session and that since this occasion his auditory capacity had increased. Fredo’s career as a music producer suddenly sped-up and evolved.

In Western psychology and medicine, such outcomes would be called a placebo effect. However, the belief that healing in another dimension can lead to tangible effects in this world is characteristic of other cultural healing traditions such as shamanism.

How Will Mainstream Medicine Approach Entity Encounters?

The psychedelic mystical experience seems to be a major factor mediating the effectiveness of psychedelic-assisted therapy - the more ‘mystical’ the experience, the better the outcome. However, the mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effect of the psychedelic mystical experience are still largely unknown. Clinical studies of psychedelics have so far focused on the more abstract features of the psychedelic mystical experience, such as ‘ego dissolution’ or ‘oneness’ experiences. But could entity encounters also contribute to the healing effect of psychedelics? If so, how might psychiatry and psychology approach this in clinical practice? Perhaps we need to consider what other cultures and other healing modalities (e.g. indigenous shamanism; African spirituality; faith healing) have to say about encounters with other-worldly beings? While we may not yet fully understand what these encounters mean, it seems that entity experiences do have profound and possibly therapeutic consequences, and deserve the attention of researchers.

Author: Anna Lutkajtis is a PhD candidate at The University of Sydney. Her research focuses on mysticism, psychedelics, and the relationship between mental health, religion and spirituality. She is the author of The Dark Side of Dharma: Meditation, Madness and Other Maladies on the Contemplative Path.