Spirituality and Psychedelic Medicine: Understanding the Experience of Oneness
Ketamine-assisted therapy is widely recognized for its ability to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and trauma-related distress. However, a subset of patients also report experiences that fall into the category of non-ordinary states of consciousness. These states are often characterized by a sense of interconnectedness, emotional clarity, awareness, or what many describe simply as oneness.
This dimension is sometimes referred to as the transpersonal or spiritual aspect of treatment. Even in non-religious individuals, these experiences can carry psychological and emotional significance when integrated appropriately.
What Is Happening in the Brain During Ketamine Therapy?
During everyday life, a part of the brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN) is very active. It’s the part that creates our constant stream of thoughts: replaying the past, worrying about the future, and holding on to our usual identity or “story about who I am.”
When ketamine is given at therapeutic doses, activity in the DMN temporarily quiets. This allows other parts of the brain to communicate more freely. People often describe this shift as:
Feeling more present
Feeling calm or clear
Feeling connected or whole
Having space from old thought patterns
Chemically, ketamine increases glutamate, which supports neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change and form new patterns. This is why many people find it easier to let go of old emotional habits, self-criticism, or negative beliefs during the days following treatment.
The Spiritual Feeling
Some people describe the experience as “spiritual” or “bigger than myself.”
Others describe it simply as quiet, peace, or relief. Or a sense of oneness with all.
The important thing to know is:
The medicine does not create spirituality.
It simply helps the mind step out of its usual mental noise so your natural clarity and presence can show through.
The experience can be meaningful, whether or not you identify as religious or spiritual.
From Religion to Scientific Materialism
I grew up in a religious environment where spirituality was defined through specific rituals, beliefs, and behaviors. As I entered adulthood, medical training and scientific thinking shaped a very different worldview. By the time I became a physician, I had fully stepped away from religion. My orientation was evidence-based, materialist, and grounded in what could be measured, quantified, and replicated.
At that stage in my life, spirituality did not seem relevant. If something could not be explained through physiology, neurobiology, or psychology, I did not consider it meaningful. I was not hostile toward spirituality. I simply did not see it as something real.
So when the psychedelic experience revealed a state of consciousness characterized by deep presence and connection, I did not have a framework to understand it. What I encountered did not fit into the categories of either the religious world I had left or the strictly materialist perspective I had adopted.
A Direct Encounter With Stillness
During my psychedelic medicine experience, the constant narrative of the mind briefly quieted. There was awareness, an opening felt in the heart. The sense of separation between “self” and other softened. Then the boundaries that defined “me” fell away completely, an “ego death” occurred and I felt a deep sense of being one with everything. I was aware, fully present, but without separation. What remained was consciousness, pure and simple, open, and deeply loving. Like I was a part of something bigger, the whole without any separation. At the time, I had no framework for this. I did not grow up with language for nonduality or awareness. And yet the experience felt more real than anything that came before it.
It was only later that I found words that matched what I had experienced, primarily through the work of Ram Dass. His descriptions of psychedelics as “showing you the possibility, not the destination” resonated perfectly. He taught that these medicines reveal a place of clarity and openness that has always been inside of us. After the experience fades, the work is to learn how to return to that state intentionally.
This shifted my orientation completely. I began looking for practices that stabilize the mind and allow awareness to settle naturally.
The Path That Followed: Yoga, Meditation, and Mantra
This curiosity led me into several traditions, not as strict belief systems but as tools.
Advaita Vedanta provided a philosophical structure that matched my experience. The idea that consciousness is not something we have but something we are clarified what that moment of presence had shown me.
Yoga taught me how the body and breath influence the mind. When posture, breath, and attention align, the mind naturally quiets. Yoga is known to regulate vagal tone and increases interoceptive awareness. It has been shown to improve cardiovascular health by reducing blood pressure and resting heart rate while increasing heart rate variability, which supports better circulation and cardiac function. Regular yoga practice has also been shown to reduce stress and anxiety by lowering cortisol levels and improving autonomic nervous system balance.
Meditation gave me a direct way to observe my thoughts rather than react to them. I learned to practice mindfulness, with focus on my breath, all thoughts fell away and I was back at ease. It is also associated with decreased limbic reactivity and increased prefrontal regulation.
Mantra repetition helped steady my mind when it felt restless or chaotic. Repeating a phrase intentionally creates a rhythm that draws attention inward. It also provides cognitive anchoring and reduces ruminative thought patterns.
Each of these practices offered a way to return to that initial sense of openness without relying on a medicine session. The spiritual element was not about belief. It was about recognizing that the feeling I felt during the psychedelic experience was not created by the medicine. It was revealed by removing layers of tension and identity that normally obscure it.
Additional Spiritual and Somatic Practices
Breathwork:
Intentional breathing exercises activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers stress signals in the body and helps the mind shift out of fight-or-flight. This allows emotions to settle and awareness to become clearer.
Fasting (or Time-Restricted Eating):
Short, intentional periods without food can heighten clarity and presence by reducing inflammatory signaling and increasing the sensitivity of the body to internal cues. This creates a quieter internal state where reflection becomes easier.
Nature Immersion:
Time outdoors reduces cognitive load and allows the nervous system to re-regulate. The natural environment encourages a sense of perspective and connection that complements ketamine integration.
Gentle Movement (Yoga, Tai Chi, or Walking Meditation):
Slow, mindful movement strengthens the connection between body and awareness. This helps integrate emotional insight into physical experience rather than leaving it as an abstract thought.
Journaling or Expression-Based Reflection:
Writing down thoughts and emotions allows the mind to process experience in a structured way and can help make insights feel more real and usable in day-to-day life.
Sensory Deprivation (Float Tanks or Dark-Room Rest):
Reducing external stimulation allows the brain to quiet its usual processing and narrative activity. When sight, sound, and motion are minimized, awareness naturally turns inward, often revealing a calm, spacious, and grounded state similar to what is accessed during ketamine sessions.
Chanting or Sound-Based Meditation (Mantra, Toning, Kirtan):
Repeating sound with intention focuses attention and stabilizes the mind’s internal rhythm. The vibration of sound in the chest and throat also activates the vagus nerve, which helps the nervous system relax and supports emotional openness.
Cold or Heat Exposure (Cold Shower and Brief Cold Plunge or Sauna and Steam Room):
Short periods of controlled cold or hot exposure increase adrenaline in a stable, healthy way and train the mind to stay present in discomfort. This strengthens emotional regulation and helps people remain steady when feelings arise during integration.
Community Sharing or Support Circles:
Speaking about your experience in a safe, supportive environment helps translate insight into language, which reinforces learning. The act of being witnessed without judgment can reduce shame and help new perspectives take root more deeply.
How This Relates to Ketamine Treatment
When patients describe an experience of oneness or deep presence during ketamine treatment, I understand how meaningful and disorienting it can be. Without a framework, the mind may try to categorize the experience as a dream, a hallucination, or something unreal. With the right context, the experience becomes a doorway into a different relationship with life.
Spiritual frameworks are helpful for three reasons:
They offer language for experiences that feel beyond ordinary thinking.
They provide grounding, so the experience does not remain abstract.
They create continuity, allowing the insight to be integrated into daily life.
The point is not to convert anyone to a belief. It is simply to recognize that inner peace is available, and there are ways to develop familiarity with it. These practices offered structure for integrating the insights. They did not require belief. They did not contradict medicine. They aligned with what ketamine experiences often reveal: the mind is more spacious and adaptive than we usually perceive it to be.
Relevance in Clinical Ketamine Work
Ketamine, at therapeutic dosing, facilitates a temporary shift away from rigid self-narratives, increased cognitive and emotional flexibility, and access to internal experiences normally filtered out by the analytical mind. For some patients, this creates a felt sense of connectedness or unity. The experience itself is not the treatment. The meaning formed around the experience, and the practices that follow, help shape the therapeutic outcome.
Integration as the Ongoing Work
The session opens a door. The integration is where change occurs.
This often includes:
Reflective journaling: Writing about your thoughts and emotions helps you understand yourself more clearly. It turns vague feelings into something you can see and work with. Just 5 minutes a day focusing on “What am I actually feeling?” is enough.
Somatic awareness practices: This is noticing sensations in the body such as tightness, breath, tension in real time. The body shows stress before the mind does. A quick body scan and a slow exhale can bring you back into calm and control.
Therapist-guided meaning-making: A therapist helps you understand your experiences in a way that forms a coherent story. It turns scattered emotional events into insight and direction, instead of confusion or self-blame.
Daily micro-practices that anchor presence and create mindfulness: Tiny habits that bring you back into presence. One conscious breath before opening your phone, relaxing your jaw when you notice tension, or pausing before responding. Small actions, repeated often, retrain the nervous system to stay grounded.
These help translate the insight from a state into a character trait.
Returning to What You Already Are
Ketamine does not create enlightenment or impose meaning. It temporarily softens the walls of the self. When those walls soften, what appears is a sense of connection that has always been present in the background of our awareness. The medicine gives a glimpse. Our life practices determine whether we carry that glimpse forward. If you have had an experience of spaciousness, of connection, or of simple presence during ketamine or plant medicine treatment, there is value in exploring it. A journal, a simple breath meditation, or five minutes of mantra repetition each morning can be enough to begin.
Spirituality in the context of psychedelic medicine is not about adopting new beliefs. It is about uncovering what is already there. The medicine opens a door. The practices and inquiry that follow are how we learn to walk through it.
