Forthcoming in Indian Spirituality in Contemporary Philosophy (OUP)
Aidan Lyon and Anand Vaidya
Abstract
This chapter introduces the PEACE framework—Practice, Experience, Analyze, Compare, Experiment—as a way of bringing the depth of contemplative traditions into rigorous conversation with psychedelic and meditation science. Contemporary research has developed increasingly precise tools for studying ego dissolution, nonduality, and mystical-type experience—the Shiva-oriented dimensions of transformation—yet remains comparatively under-equipped to theorize the formative, energetic, and reorganizational processes that shape experience over time, the Shakti side of the picture. To address this asymmetry, we propose that Tantric cartographies, particularly the cakra systems, offer a structured way of differentiating these under-theorized dimensions of change. Translating such practice-based distinctions into scientific discourse presents distinctive cross-cultural conceptual challenges, since these categories arise from disciplined methods and lived transformation rather than abstract theory alone. To illustrate how this work can proceed, we develop the Psychedelic–Kundalinī Thesis (PKT), which functionally re-engineers prāṇa, cakras, and kundalinī into empirically tractable constructs and applies large-language-model (LLM) analysis to first-person psychedelic reports. The resulting patterns suggest structured correspondences: stimulant experiences clustering around the agency and activation characteristic of Maṇipūra, MDMA expressing the relational warmth of Anāhata, and classic psychedelics such as LSD and DMT concentrating in the visionary and integrative modes associated with Ājñā and Sahasrāra. In this way, the PKT serves as a proof of concept, demonstrating how PEACE can generate analytically precise, cross-culturally responsible, and empirically investigable research programs grounded in contemplative practice.
Keywords: PEACE framework, Psychedelic–Kundalinī Thesis, Conceptual engineering, Psychedelic science, Altered states, Chakras, Kundalini, Prana, Shiva–Shakti, Neurophenomenology
The profound states of consciousness occasioned by psychedelics expose fault lines in the inherited foundations of psychological science (Pollan 2019). From the first upheavals of the mid-twentieth century through today’s carefully designed clinical trials, many reports have read less like medical case notes than divine revelations—experiences in which the ego dissolves, consciousness expands, boundaries collapse, insight turns metaphysical, and time’s flow is manifest as the stillness of eternity (Grof 1975; Griffiths et al. 2016). Confronted with phenomena that exceeded the vocabulary of mid-century psychology and psychiatry, early researchers such as Walter Pahnke and Bill Richards (1966) turned to the world’s mystical traditions for orientation, drawing on the foundational work of William James’s (1902) Varieties of Religious Experience and the cross-cultural conceptual analyses found in Walter Stace’s (1961) Mysticism and Philosophy.
The field that has emerged as psychedelic science now regularly makes use of notions such as ineffability, non-dual awareness, pure consciousness, mindfulness, and oneness (Letheby 2021; Kangaslampi et al. 2023; Lyon 2023; Yaden et al. 2024). Especially with the landmark result that mystical-type experiences correlate with therapeutic outcomes (Griffiths et al. 2016; Ross et al. 2016; Romeo et al. 2025), these spiritual concepts have come to shape psychometric questionnaires, influence therapeutic protocols, and frame our understanding of the transformative potential of psychedelics. Not all researchers in the field are happy about this matter (Zijlmans and Sanders 2021), but much of that debate—the so-called mysticism wars—is largely driven by conceptual confusion (Letheby et al. 2024).
The spiritual concepts most influential in psychedelic science—drawn from a range of contemplative traditions—privilege stillness, detachment, and transcendence: experiences marked by self-dissolution, boundary loss, and expansive or timeless awareness. Yet these states do not exhaust the forms of transformation reported in psychedelic or contemplative practice (Taves 2020; Yaden et al. 2024). Alongside experiences of dissolution and transcendence, people frequently describe changes that are energetic, embodied, meaning-making, and formative. Classical yoga offers a vocabulary that cleanly articulates this contrast. In yogic philosophy, states of stillness, detachment, and self-suspension are associated with Shiva, while processes of movement, embodiment, and creative reorganization are associated with Shakti. Read as complementary orientations rather than ontological claims, this distinction captures two modes of transformation: one in which patterns dissolve and loosen, and another in which new patterns of feeling, meaning, and agency are actively formed. When the conceptual tools of psychedelic science attend primarily to Shiva, they risk producing a lopsided picture—one that explains how “selves” dissolve (Letheby 2021), “priors” loosen (Carhart-Harris and Friston 2019), and “minds” reveal (Lyon 2023)—but struggles to account for how new patterns of feeling, action, meaning, and relation are formed, embodied, and integrated into everyday life (Lyon and Farennikova 2022).
The consequences of this imbalance are not merely academic. Although Romeo et al. (2025) found strong evidence that mystical experiences correlate with therapeutic outcomes (p = 0.0001), the effect itself is moderate, with a correlation of r = 0.33. This is consistent with what clinicians and practitioners regularly observe: mystical experience is neither sufficient nor necessary for healing. Indeed, an r value of 0.33 implies that about 90% of outcome variance is unexplained by the degree to which one has mystical experience alone. The unexplained remainder is the “dark matter” of psychedelic research and therapy—clearly shaping outcomes, yet largely invisible to this Shiva-oriented way of understanding psychedelic transformation (cf. Taves 2020; Kangaslampi et al. 2023; Yaden et al. 2024).
One promising source of the missing structure is Tantra, a family of yogic traditions that explicitly integrates stillness and transformation. This move is not without precedent. Clinicians and researchers have long noted that psychedelic experiences often unfold through patterned, energetic processes that resemble accounts of kundalinī and cakra-related phenomena, even when described outside any yogic framework (Metzner 1971/1976; Grof 1975; Sannella 1976; Naranjo 1996; DeGracia 1997; Hofmann 2013; Corneille and Luke 2021; Maehle 2021). Where the mystical language inherited by psychedelic science tends to emphasize dissolution and transcendence, Tantric frameworks hold these qualities together with embodiment and formative change. In yogic philosophy, this integration is articulated through the complementarity of Shiva and Shakti—pure awareness and transformative energy—understood here as complementary orientations rather than metaphysical commitments. Read in this way, the distinction captures two modes of transformation: one in which patterns loosen and dissolve, and another in which new patterns of experience are actively formed. Importantly, Tantra offers not a doctrine to be adopted, but a practical cartography of experience, grounded in disciplined practices that reliably generate distinct patterns of change (Woodroffe 1919; Brooks 1990; White 2000; Feuerstein 1998; Wallis 2012). For a field confronting the limits of dissolution-centered models, Tantra is compelling not because it is ancient or esoteric, but because it already addresses, in structured form, the dimensions of transformation psychedelic science struggles to explain.
At the same time, engaging Tantra in a scientific context is not a trivial undertaking. These concepts did not arise as abstract theories but as elements of living traditions, embedded in disciplined practices, ethical constraints, and pedagogical lineages. Removed from that context, they are easily reduced as “mere metaphors”, misread as metaphysical claims, or applied in ways that exceed the capacities of those encountering them (cf. McMahan 2008; Han 2015; Purser 2019). This risk is not merely conceptual: intense experiences framed without adequate structure or guidance can destabilize rather than help or heal (Sannella 1976; Lindahl et al. 2017; Cooper et al. 2021). For these reasons, the question is not whether contemplative traditions have something to offer psychedelic science, but how we can learn responsibly from their wisdom.
To move forward, what is needed is not a further expansion of metaphor, but a principled method for cross-cultural conceptual engineering (Cappelen 2018; Chalmers 2020; Thomasson 2021). Anand Vaidya’s (2015) ACE framework—Analyze, Compare, Experiment—provides a clear starting point, showing how concepts drawn from different traditions can be rigorously analyzed, compared, and empirically evaluated. This approach works well when traditions primarily encode their insights in texts and theories. Tantra, however, poses a distinctive challenge: its core distinctions are inseparable from disciplined practices that reliably generate structured forms of experience. In such cases, conceptual analysis alone is insufficient. The PEACE framework, introduced here, extends ACE to meet this challenge by treating Practice and Experience as two additional constraints on this particular form of cross-cultural conceptual engineering. Only repeatable, method-governed practices and only experiences showing convergent phenomenological structure are admitted into analysis, where they function to discipline and refine comparative claims and empirical hypotheses. In this way, PEACE preserves the rigor of ACE while enabling responsible engagement with practice-based and experientially-oriented traditions, such as those of Tantra.