Dana Sawyer is professor emeritus of philosophy and world religions at the Maine College of Art & Design. He has authored notable biographies of Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith, exploring their contributions to perennial philosophy and psychedelic studies. His recent works include “The Transcendental Meditation Movement” for Cambridge University Press (2023) and “The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded” for Monkfish (2024). With expertise in Hinduism and Buddhism, Sawyer’s research delves into the attraction of Westerners to Asian religions and the unitive mystical experiences across global mystical traditions. He actively participates in professional conferences, wellness programs, and supports interfaith chaplaincy and educational initiatives in Stok, Ladakh. MysticMag chats with Prof. Dana Sawyer on his overall work on comparative mysticism and his new book The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded (Monkfish, 2024).
Dana, your work has focused on comparative mysticism and the “perennial philosophy.” Can you explain what these concepts entail and why they are important in today’s world?
Today more people have more opportunities to study and learn from a wide range of world philosophies and religions than has ever happened before. And now, when the fastest growing demographic in the western world relative to religion is “spiritual but not religious,” people are looking for meaning from a range of traditions. These are people who wish to live a spirituality rather than believe in one; they want their worldview to be based on their own direct experience, and many of them are finding resonance and sustenance with what Aldous Huxley famously termed the “perennial philosophy.” The perennial philosophy is a family of theories related to a particular type of mystical experience, an experience in which one feels a strong sense of identity with all reality, a feeling of interconnectedness between all things, a feeling that all things are part of one thing that includes oneself. At a time when mainstream culture and media focus on and promote messages of existential indifference and psychological isolation, the perennial philosophy is a breath of fresh air, offering cogent reason to believe we have a meaningful place in the universe.
You’ve written about the value of psychedelic experiences in the study of mysticism. How do these experiences contribute to our understanding of consciousness and spirituality?
First of all, it’s important to point out that many of the world’s mystical traditions have been—and still are—traditions that employ a psychedelic sacrament. For instance, the Native American Church uses peyote as its sacrament and Santo Daime uses ayahuasca. Second of all, there is very strong evidence that mystical experiences triggered by psychedelics are phenomenologically indistinguishable from those that occur naturally. Roland Griffiths’ study at Johns Hopkins in 2006 gave indisputable support to that finding; moreover, nearly 70% of his test subjects reported their session on psilocybin as one of the five most important spiritual experiences of their entire lives—with 30% placing it at number one. So if psychedelics can reliably trigger mystical experiences, including the unitive mystical experience, then we now have a first-hand way of reliably studying mysticism and its possible value. Regarding the latter, it’s been definitively shown in studies at both Johns Hopkins and New York University that higher scores on the mystical experience questionnaire (MEQ), filled out after psychedelic sessions, result in greater therapeutic outcomes. So critics of mysticism as the realm of woo woo and useless thinking take note! Mystical experiences are being shown to have extraordinary value—not only for those needing therapy but also for health normals.
Related to what I’ve just said, studies with psychedelics have lent support to the view of traditional mystics like Shankara, Shantideva, Rumi, Teresa of Avila, etc. that consciousness is a variable and consciousness can be expanded. There are many levels of consciousness and ‘channels’ on the human ‘television set’ that most people aren’t aware of, but that psychedelics are making clear actually exist. Huxley referred to the latent ability of humans to expand their consciousness—in the ways that some mystics seem to have—as perhaps our planet’s greatest unused natural resource. It’s time to wake up from our blinkered view of our circumstances and our potentialities.
You’ve written biographies of Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith, two influential figures in the exploration of consciousness and spirituality. What drew you to write about these individuals, and what insights did you gain from researching their lives and work?
So that’s another whole book in and of itself! Speaking briefly, I was drawn to the work of Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith more than 50 years ago, while a student at university. Their seminal work on the perennial philosophy struck me as a compelling message of hope. They were able to study mysticism soberly and with a healthy measure of skepticism, without falling into the trap of cynicism, so prevalent at their time—and still today. Their summation of the unitive mystical experience as the common thread running across the world’s mystical traditions made sense to me, and it still does. Regarding Huston, whom I knew very well and was able to call a friend, his presence as well as his insight was amazing; I often felt elevated just by being with him. Such a beautiful and loving soul— and he wore his soul very close to the surface of his being.
Your most recent books include an analysis of The Transcendental Meditation Movement and The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded. Can you share some key insights or findings from these works?
These are two very different books. In my book on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Transcendental Meditation for Cambridge University Press, I was working entirely as an academic—specifically as a scholar of religious studies focusing on new religious movements. “TM” had its heyday back in the early 1960s and early 1970s, when the Maharishi was the guru of The Beatles, and what interested me most about that project was the influence it had on the young people who joined that movement—members of my own generation. The most anti-authoritarian generation in American history gave over all authority to a Hindu guru—how ironic! And this was also true for the followers of Sri Rajneeh, Swami Muktananda, Guru Maharaji, and others. I see such narratives of absolute surrender as cautionary tales for today, in this time when so many people are surrendering control to shamans in the psychedelic communities who have been revealed as charlatans. I wrote this book for scholars of religion, but it has definite import as a cautionary tale for everyone attracted to spiritual teachers.
Regarding my newest book, The Perennial Philosophy Reloaded, I’ve tried to update the position of Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith—and of Alan Watts, Ram Dass, Frances Vaughan, Stanislav Grof, and other perennial philosophers—in light of the past thirty years of studies into mystical experience, comparative mysticism, and psychedelics. All of the theorists I named above, by the way, were not only perennialists, placing a premium on the unitive mystical experience, but also early advocates for the use of psychedelics as tools for self-actualization. Given how many people are now experimenting with psychedelics and having profound experiences of oneness with reality, unity, and interconnectivity, this book will provide them with an interesting and viable interpretation of their own spiritual upgrades.
I’ve aimed this book directly at the general reader, eliminating philosophical ‘shop talk’ and cutting directly to the chase by answering such key philosophical questions as ‘What’s the nature of reality?’ and ‘What is the meaning of our existence?’ from the perspective of the perennial philosophy. Plus I’ve made clear that there are several strands to the braid of the position, so I’ve given readers a variety of perennialist perspectives from which to choose. The perennial philosophy is not a siloed or monolithic position, so people can follow up on whichever strand of the viewpoint they find most congruent with their own experiences. The book is only 120 pages but it’s really the culmination of my several decades of exploring—and teaching about—the mystical traditions.
You and your wife are avid campers, hikers, and kayakers who find solace in nature. How do these experiences in nature influence your academic work and understanding of spirituality?
Directly! As a scholar I am very clear on the difference between facts and opinion. In my academic work, I am careful to be as objective as possible, never claiming expertise in areas where I have none or claiming as fact what is only theory. But as a human being who is living a life and wanting to live a meaningful life, I must also make decisions about what really matters to me—and about why my choices really matter. Long ago, I embraced as an axiom for my own life something that Alan Watts once said, which is, “We don’t come into the world, we come out of it.” This planet—planet Earth—grew us in the same natural way that my head is now growing hair! The Earth doesn’t belong to us, we belong to it, and the sooner we embrace that view of our relationship to the planet, the sooner we will craft a worldview that improves our currently destructive behaviors. I’ve tried to do my part by reducing my carbon footprint by living in an off-the-grid cabin, in the woods of Maine, for six months each year—for more than thirty years. What I’ve realized is that my family and I give up nothing of real consequence during these months. Instead we gain a tremendous wealth of beauty and silence. We green bathe, enjoy starry skies, watch animals and birds, and enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes, by the way, these experiences also trigger unitive mystical experiences.
Any last thoughts?
I think that as this current ‘psychedelic renaissance’ continues to grow, and if it grows slowly and soberly, more and more people are going to have more and more unitive mystical experiences, and as they do so, they will want to integrate those experiences into their lives—and into the life of their communities. I see that as a wonderful possibility. What if it IS true that at the root of each of our individual experiences of consciousness there is what William James termed the “mother sea of consciousness?” What if my consciousness and yours are only discrete moments of the one universal consciousness—a consciousness akin to what Huxley termed “Mind at Large” and Ralph Waldo Emerson called “Oversoul”? If we could access that level of our own being—via psychedelics, meditation, yoga, breath work, time spent in nature, music, or another other set of tools—we might find ourselves with a new, broader, more wholistic, integral, experience-based platform on which to make our life’s decisions. I think personally that Rumi, the Sufi mystical, was exactly right when he wrote, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” I’m hoping my new book can lend support to the wisdom and value that exists in understanding ourselves in that way. The first step? Realizing that mystical experiences are not mumbo-jumbo but real events expressive of more self-actualized states of consciousness.
If you would like to find out more about Dana Sawyer, please visit https://www.danasawyer.com/
