Intro

Ari Brouwer is a researcher in the field of psychedelics who is currently working towards his PhD.  In 2020 he published a paper in the journal of psychopharmacology with Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial College’s Centre for Psychedelic Research introducing the concept of the pivotal mental state.  This paper offered a way of thinking about many types of transformative experience, including spiritual experiences attained by religious ascetics, those achieved through the consumption of psychedelics and even states of psychosis.  Today we talk about the idea of the pivotal mental state and discuss its interesting implications.