From Altered States to Fundamental Peace: Taxonomies of Consciousness, Psychedelics and Hypnosis Through the Lens of the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Background Psychedelic medicine is approaching regulatory approval, and suggestion alone can now occasion mystical-type experiences in the laboratory. Yet the field still names altered states after their triggers, and nobody can yet show whether the state itself, rather than its context, is what heals. Objective This review reads the evidence presented at the 2026 Annual Conference of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (SCEH) through three lenses: the new consensus taxonomy of altered states of consciousness, the Fundamental Peace model of hypnotic emotion regulation, and the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha's map of states and of the knower. Sources Six SCEH 2026 contributions (Cardeña's taxonomy keynote; Patterson on hypnosis-induced mysticism and psychedelics; Majeti and Corlett's qualitative analysis of hypnotically occasioned mystical experiences; Hood and Elkins's meta-analysis of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for anxiety; the author's Circuits of Fundamental Peace; and the conference programme), the papers behind them, the published commentaries on the taxonomy, and Brudner et al.'s (2025) test of mystical experience as a predictor of response in treatment-resistant depression. Synthesis Different triggers converge on the same phenomenological categories (unity, imaginal, detachment, altered identity), so trigger-based labels should give way to phenomenological ones. The intensity of a mystical state predicts benefit at a first psilocybin dose, but repeated mystical states did not bring proportionally more relief, and hypnosis can occasion the state without yet showing comparable clinical change. We argue that the missing variable is the experiencer's stance toward the state, which the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha grades in its seven stages of knowledge (jñāna-bhūmikā), and that Fundamental Peace, with its four components and the FP20 scale, operationalises both that stance in the moment and the capacity that remains afterwards. A network account (default mode, salience and executive control networks) links the two. Conclusions We propose a four-layer Context–State–Stance–Trait model, a research agenda in which hypnosis serves as the experimental control psychedelic science has lacked, and testable hypotheses in which Fundamental Peace mediates the path from extraordinary state to lasting change.
Author: Luis Miguel Gallardo
Institution: Shoolini University
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7222864490