The central explanatory framework proposed for accounting for the features of psychedelic entities involves similar psychedelic effects stimulating (or releasing) innate aspects of neurotransmission, brain function, and the innate modular functions of the brain. These neurophenomenological explanations have the potential to highlight how psychedelic entity experiences can result in the compelling appearance of an objective reality, filled with an experiential force that results in a perceived epistemological and ontological significance.

The widespread manifestation of these innate forms includes their natural manifestations in non-drug experiences and in medical conditions (i.e., epilepsy, insulin hypoglycemia, delirium from fever or infections, and psychotic episodes); during near-death experiences and hypnagogic states; and under conditions of flickering lights, sensory deprivation, and rhythmic drumming ( Siegel, 1977 ). The elemental forms of the entoptic images are also integrated into larger geometric patterns that typify the complex imagery of psychedelic experiences.

A justification for evaluating the structure of psychedelic entity experiences in relation to innate brain structures is found in the phenomena of entoptics, i.e., the visual phenomena produced by innate functions of the brain. Recognition that psychedelic substances stimulate innate representational systems goes back almost a century (see Carr, 1995 ). In his studies of the subjective effects of mescaline, Kluver ( 1928 ) found his subjects reported recurring geometric patterns. He used this subjective data to provide characterization of the recurrent features of these entoptic images, which he labeled “form constants.” The principal types he recognized included basic geometric forms; a lattice structure manifested as grating, honeycombs, and cobwebs; and openings such as tunnels, funnels, and cones.

The inevitably of projecting human-like qualities in our perception of the world requires that we assess experience of psychedelic entities with reference to our evolved predisposition to project human-like entities with certain features. The paper proposes testable hypotheses derived from evolutionary psychology that link features of psychedelic entity experiences to functions of innate modular structures of the brain.

These features of psychedelic entities involving innate intelligences have been evoked as explanations for the universality of spiritual beliefs. These reflect the operation of innate intelligences, modules, and operators for unconscious processing of the most significant features of the environment – animals and other humans (see Gardner, 2000 ). Our innate evolved psychology involves a number of predispositions and interpretative structures provided by biology to detect features of human-like entities. This tendency is a consequence of millions of years of adaptations for the most important factors affecting human survival – other human-like entities. These innate structures cultivated a disposition toward interpreting the external world in terms of the presence of others and their desires, intentions, temperament, etc. These tendencies reflect the necessity for adaptation to a social world in which the ability to understand the internal dispositions of other members of our species – their perceptions, thoughts, intentions, roles, personalities, evaluations, and emotions – played a crucial role in adaptation and survival.

These cross-cultural similarities are examined within the context of humans’ innate operators and innate intelligences (see Gardner, 2000 ), ancient human adaptations that provide basic aspects of our unconscious functional processing modules. These involve innate functions for specific operations, such as detecting an agent, recognizing animal species, perceiving the thoughts of social others, imitative interpretation of others (mirror neuron inference), and other adaptive automatic information processing capacities acquired in the course of human evolution.

These similarities indicate a need for a broader explanation of psychedelic entities within the context of other kinds of mythological, spiritual, religious, and supernatural entities, an explanation found in their common basis in human biology. The apparent similarities in psychedelic entities and various other types of entity experiences found across cultures, time, and diverse conditions for altering consciousness suggest that an explanation be sought within innate functions of the human brain.

The possible qualities of objective psychedelic entities are suggested by case comparisons of reports of these experiences; this also reveals a wide diversity across various psychedelic entity experiences, including those from individuals using the same drug. Such comparisons call into doubt the assumption of a single unambiguous objective concept of a psychedelic entity experience, with a common set of features manifested across all experiences. But only through a systematic and comparative analysis of entity experiences can we determine, if psychedelic-induced entity experiences constitute a singular objective entity, a clear class of experiences that are uniquely and reliably associated with psychedelic experiences, or whether they are but another example of a widely distributed experience of various forms of an encounter with an alien other.

This paper proposes a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of the features of entities and uses case materials and previous profiles of psychedelic entity experiences to offer hypotheses regarding what might be revealed by such systematic evidence. This paper outlines a methodology for empirically addressing the question of qualities of objective psychedelic entities and proposes a series of hypotheses regarding the qualities of these experiences based on principles of evolutionary psychology and the neurophenomenology of psychedelic experiences. These perspectives derived from evolutionary psychology provide hypotheses regarding the qualities of objective psychedelic entities, and explanations of their qualities through a conceptual definition of psychedelic entities by reference to brain processes involving innate modular structures and their functions. I propose explanations as to why objective psychedelic entities should reflect the modular structures of the brain and present a series of hypotheses derived from evolutionary psychology regarding the basic features of objective psychedelic entity experiences.

I believe that the evidence available allows us to provide a similar materialist explanation of psychedelic entity experiences within the known frameworks of psychedelic effects on the brain. But the development of a rational and empirical discourse on psychedelic entities faces challenges due to the lack of formalized attempts at rigorous comparative examination. As Gallimore and Luke ( 2016 ) and Luke ( 2011 ) noted, we need an academic study of entity encounters that offers a thorough examination of the similarities in independent reports by identifying the recurrent characteristics common to these experiences.

If encounters with psychedelic entities produce a repeatable pattern of experiences across people, those patterns establish an objective psychedelic entity, as well as a phenomenon to be explained as a conceptual entity. Just as we explain the experience of rainbows as your physical perspective on the sunlight reflecting off of water droplets in the air, we can seek naturalistic explanations of the nature of psychedelic entity experiences that do not require evoking the notion of a transcendent noumenon. There is not really a rainbow where you perceive one, but we can explain this repeatable intersubjectively validated observation through a conceptual explanation involving an understanding of the physics of light and perception.

The concepts of an objective psychedelic entity can be derived from similarities in individual experiences that point to a shared intersubjective reality underlying the experiences – are there repeatedly encountered features/qualia in psychedelic entity encounters? The question of an objective psychedelic entity is concerned with whether across observers there are common features. Can we agree objectively – interpersonally and intersubjectively, and ultimately scientifically – about whether there are regular features exhibited in these experiences?

The meaning of definition 1 – “independent, separate, or self-contained existence” – implies an empirical entity with transcendent status. True believers who allege that psychedelic entity experiences are real represent the notion of a separate and independent existence, apart from our imagination – a transcendent entity that implies a noumenon. In my view, such claims have not been substantiated with rigorous methodologies (i.e., parapsychological research). I shall leave the evaluation of this transcendent reality of psychedelic beings for others and instead address the concepts of an objective entity (intersubjectively validated experience) and conceptual entity (an explanation for such experiences).

Psychedelic entities are obviously experiences that occur. How are we to conceptualize this data with respect to ontology concerned with the nature of reality and the similarities and differences among basic categories of being that may exist (Encyclopedia of Philosophy)? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s ( 2017 ) definitions of entities help to clarify at least three types of psychedelic entities: transcendent entities (noumenon, “1a: being, existence; especially: independent, separate, or self-contained existence”); and objective (intersubjective phenomenon) and conceptual entities (“2: something that has separate and distinct existence and objective or conceptual reality”).

Nonetheless, the distinction of phenomena justifies an acceptance of the reality of the experiences for the person. Accepting the phenomenal contents of experience as data for scientific exploration of the phenomena of the human mind provides an empirical foundation for characterizing the nature of these experiences. Analysis of these descriptions can provide data to determine if there is an objective (intersubjective) reality to these experiences; examine their nature as conceptual entities; and identify the mechanisms producing these experiences in terms of known effects of psychedelics on brain function, potentially explaining the processes producing these often convincing manifestations.

The experience of an entity does not mean that what we see is an actual reality. The tendency for the mind to play tricks is easily illustrated in visual illusions and with distorted figures that use irregular line orientations to force the eye into a perception of movement. Various visual illusions (Figure 1 ) do not move as we perceive them to, but rather are distortions produced by our brain and visual system.

If we dismiss these experiences as irrelevant hallucinations without substance or meaning, we exclude significant information regarding the nature of the human mind. Yet, if we simply accept the phenomenological experiences of entities as transcendent realities, we commit an error of epistemological naivety. The Kantian distinction between phenomena and noumena is useful here. Do these psychedelic entities represent noumena, manifestations of a real transcendent reality, or are they merely phenomena produced by our complex brains, but ultimately nothing more than dream-like hallucinatory experiences?

What are we to make of reports of psychedelic entities, experiences of autonomous beings often experienced on psychedelics? Many reports of psychedelic entity experiences allege that they are not a hallucination nor merely some phenomena of experience, but rather a manifestation of some transcendent real noumenon involving communicative contact with another sentient being (e.g., see Luke, 2011 ; Meyer, 1994 , 2010 ; St John, 2015 ). What is the reality of these experiences? How do we understand the ontology and origin of entity experiences, if we do not accept that they are reflections of a transcendent reality?

Their findings may also contribute to our understanding of entity experiences. Principal features of those entity experiences involving deaths were also generally characterized by their occurrence after awakening from sleep; a vision of a family member; and information that they had suffered a life-ending event, which was later verified. This seems to tell us something about the causal nature of these specific entity experiences – the prior condition of being in a sleep-induced alteration of conscious, an image of a close family member emerging from the unconscious, and their death, which was later confirmed. Welcome to the world of supernatural entities!

These relationships among features that systematic study of the qualities of psychedelic entity experiences might reveal are illuminated by the findings of the classic 19th century Census of Hallucinations ( Sidgwick, Johnson, Myers, Podmore, & Sidgwick, 1894 ). This survey study asked people, “Have you ever, when completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?” Seems like a possible entity experience!

Determining an objective psychedelic entity phenomenon reveals the qualities to be explained, providing a basis for determining what is involved in the conceptual psychedelic entity. If the converging data from different cultures and types of entities point to common features of an objective entity, this would point to something that transcends the human cultural situation. This is found in the relationships that manifest something beyond the appearance that we perceive, whatever are the common principles of psychedelic entities beyond their obvious diversity.

The variable list used should be derived from grounded research as well as theory. Ideally, literature from the numerous areas that have already assessed the specific qualities and characteristics of various types of entities (i.e., elves, leprechauns, angels, extraterrestrials, etc.) would be extracted and used as the basis of the descriptive variables coded. We need to know how psychedelic entities appear and are experienced, as well as what they are not like. The summary of the features of angelology ( Fox & Sheldrake, 2014 ) is an example of preexisting variable areas ideal for such an inquiry.

The data coded can include the labels given by percipients (i.e., elf, extraterrestrial, monster, etc.), but the data need to emphasize descriptions, characteristics seen or inferred such as physical features, behaviors, intentions, activities, as well as the set and setting of the percipient and entity.

A systemic coding and analysis of the features of these various accounts can determine whether or not a single type or several types of psychedelic entity experiences occur. And only through comparison with profiles obtained for reports of what are conceptualized as angels, fairies, extraterrestrials, and shamanic spirits can we determine, if there are unique features of psychedelic entities.

Consequently, entitiology must encompass a number of existing areas of inquiry and by necessity will incorporate at least a part of the domain of the entities reported in the following areas of study:

Since entities can be purely mental experiences, the experiences of dreams may also involve entities, especially incubus or succubus experiences, where there is a clear sense of being attacked by an entity in sleep. The experiences of other beings occurring during dreams provide a prototype of the entity experience, and dreams provide a normal and natural framework for assessing the possible unique qualities of psychedelic entity experiences. Indeed, the qualities of entities in dreams may manifest many, if not all, of the principal qualities of psychedelic entity experiences. On the other hand, if there are differences between psychedelic-induced and dream experiences of entities, this can reveal what is special about the psychedelic entity experiences.

Our data on entities must be inclusive in many senses. Do entity experiences require a sense of a presence outside of oneself, exterior to the body? Or can entities also be experienced inside of the body or even just in the mind, such as in interdimensional experiences or possession phenomena? Recognition that our experience of the external world is a model produced in the mind undermines any rigid distinction between perception of internal and external entities, but such differences in experiences should be part of the data we collect from entity reports. Furthermore, psychedelic entity experiences are typically conceptualized as internal to the mind, rather than in the external world, requiring that all forms of internal entity experiences be considered for comparative purposes.

This inquiry into psychedelic entity experiences must include entity experiences beyond those directly linked to psychedelics (as important as a clear delineation of the category “entities” might be, I do not think that it is necessary to have an a priori definition. We need to include all possible types of experiences and reports in our pool of entity data. We should be dissuaded by a priori determination or definition of entities, allowing the characterization to be empirically driven, derived from the data rather than used to define the data to be collected. While one might object that some types of experiences might not be valid for inclusion in the field of entities, empirical analyses should be able to show that the inclusion of specific kinds of data either distorts solutions or significantly increases dimension or variance in models. Inclusion of non-entity data points might also be useful in showing the relationship of entity types to non-entity concepts, providing bridges into the realm of ordinary phenomena of consciousness). If we are to establish that there are unique features of psychedelic entity experiences that require explanation, it is through the comparison of a consistent profile of psychedelic entity experiences with entity experiences that occur under other conditions. The possible unique nature of psychedelic entities cannot be effectively assessed apart from broader comparisons with all kinds of entities, with their similarities and differences providing crucial data for revealing the possibility of an objective psychedelic entity experience and its natures.

To determine the significant features of the experience of entities, psychedelic and otherwise, we need to be able to code variables from detailed accounts of these personal experiences and subject the empirical data to systematic analysis to determine the patterns of characteristics. This assessment of the significant features of entity experiences requires first, a structured solicitation and coding of descriptions of these experiences; second, an analysis of the similarities and differences among entity experiences, by procedures such as cluster analysis which define similar groups; and finally a comparison of those empirically derived groups and their common features with other data, including the a priori labels for the experiences; the known effects of psychedelics on brain and perception; and the functions of innate modules hypothesized to account for their features.

I propose that to determine whether there are consistent and unique features of psychedelic entity experiences, we need a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary assessment of phenomenological reports of diverse types of experiences of entities (i.e., see Winkelman, 1992 ). Formal quantitative comparisons of the reported characteristics of diverse entity experiences are necessary to discover any commonalities to psychedelic entity experiences and their uniqueness with respect to other types of entity experiences. We need a new field of scientific inquiry, entitiology, i.e., the study of entities, to address the questions of the nature of psychedelic, and other types of entity experiences. This field of entitiology might be viewed as partially subsumed within the field of philosophy called ontology [The Encyclopedia of Philosophy ( 2017 ) characterized ontology as concerned with the study of beings and their nature. Ontology is characterized as concerned first with the nature of being and reality, what it is that exists and is what it is made of, what are the general features of these things; ontology includes a concern with identifying the basic categories of being, determining evidence regarding what entities may exist, and how such entities may be related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences (summarized from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology ; also see Kenny, 2012 )].

We need to verify if any types of entity experiences are unique to psychedelics. Are there consistent features of psychedelic entity experiences that are found only with psychedelics, or do the psychedelic entity experiences reflect the same basic properties found in entities experienced in other contexts? If there is not one type of psychedelic entity experience but a variety of subtypes, then we have several objective phenomena to be explained. If major features of psychedelic entity experiences mirror those of other kinds of entity experiences, then our questions are more broadly concerned with the explanation of entity experiences in general, as well as why psychedelics are so powerful in inducing these experiences that also occur in other contexts.

Whatever their unique properties may be, there are nonetheless notable parallels of many psychedelic entity experiences with other experiences of encounters with entities. For example, the experiences that result from extensive meditative practices may include encounters with entities that parallel the reports for psychedelic-induced experiences. Meditative traditions have numerous reports of experiences of entities that are encountered during profound meditative experiences, or even in everyday life!

Case data show that what is reported about psychedelic entities is also found in many experiences and cultural traditions, which are often evoked in describing the nature of psychedelic entity experiences. Casual comparisons show overall similarities of psychedelic entity experiences with entity experiences in other contexts, such as religious and spiritual visions, shamanism, experiences of possession, spirit allies, guardians, and animal transformation; out-of-body experiences and a range of other anomalous body phenomena; experiences of haunting, ghosts, and apparitions; encounters with various entities conceptualized in folklore and mythology traditions as dwarfs, elves, “little people,” demons, etc.; experiences of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) encounters; the phenomenological content of dream experiences; and the phenomenology and neurophysiology of many psychiatric conditions, including hallucinations and properly speaking.

These admittedly unsystematic assessments of psychedelic entities suggest that there is no single profile for a psychedelic entity, but a diversity of appearances manifested in these experiences. Whether they nonetheless share functional properties or features in their manifestations in human experience has not been determined through systematic study of accounts. Do psychedelic entities appearing as bees, reptiles, and spiders do the same things as those appearing as elves, angels, and ETs?

These predominantly anthropomorphic figures are mirrored in Luke’s ( 2011 ) summary of various studies on dimethyltryptamine (DMT) entity experiences that reported entities characterized as gnomes, dwarfs, elves, imps, goblins and other forms of “little people,” as well as angels, spirits, and gods. But even this humanoid form is exceeded in the characterizations of DMT entity experiences in modern clinical settings; Strassman’s ( 2000 ) participants experienced various types of “beings,” including “entities,” “guides,” and “aliens,” but appearing similar to insects, bees, cacti, clowns, mantises, reptiles, spiders, and stick figures.

The paintings of Pablo Amaringo (see Luna & Amaringo, 1999 ) represent a person’s psychedelic entity experiences. Amaringo’s work highlights elements that suggest more than a single profile for such entities. Nonetheless, they generally appear as humanoids, but these reflect a variety of cultural and religious themes, including Amerindian, Spiritist, Asian, and Christian. Amaringo’s depictions cover the range of themes reported by Shanon ( 2010 ) in his analysis of a wide range of supernatural beings experienced under the influence of ayahuasca. Shanon specified these different types as involving mythological beings; divinities and semi-divinities; half-human and half-animal shape-shifting hybrids; extraterrestrials – angels and celestial beings; and demons and other entities of death.

Do we know what are the essential and necessary features of a psychedelic entity experience – beyond that a psychedelic and an entity are involved? Is there a specific profile to psychedelic entity experiences, a common set of features to these entity experiences that regularly occur under psychedelic influences? Yet, there is no systematic evidence establishing such a singular experience of an objective psychedelic entity and its qualities; on the contrary, case examples show that psychedelic entity experiences take a considerable variety of forms. This paper uses case materials and others’ profiles of various psychedelic entity and other entity experiences to identify the possible qualities of objective psychedelic entities and as a basis for hypotheses regarding what might be revealed by a formal cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of such systematic evidence.

Humans’ Innate Intelligences, Modules, and Operators

Why should we assess psychedelic entity experiences within the frameworks of evolutionary psychology? Simply because evolutionary psychology and the cognitive science of religion (see Atran, 2006; Barrett, 2000; Boyer, 2001, 2017; Clements, 2017; Pyysiäinen, 2009) have shown that operations of innate brain mechanisms can explain the virtual universal distribution of spirit beliefs and experiences. Of particular relevance are the perspectives on how the typical features of spirit experiences and beliefs can be explained in terms of the functions of the brain’s innate operators or innate modules. The similarities of entity characteristics with the functions of humans’ innate human cognitive features support the hypothesis that these innate functions are the source of entity experiences.

The operation of innate operators is revealed in the complex behaviors of newborns in a number of areas, e.g., the response of infants to faces and face-like configurations. Otsuka (2014) reviewed studies of face recognition in infants that show their selective attention to discriminate human faces. Face recognition is one of the best-studied cases of a specialized innate cognitive system (Barrett, 2000), a highly developed system which Barrett noted may reflect the need for kin recognition [Barrett (p. 176) cites research establishing the specific brain regions for facial recognition as involving “the fusiform gyrus in the inferior right temporal lobe.” “Neuroimaging studies in adult participants have consistently identified cortical areas related to face processing including the inferior occipital gyrus (occipital face area), the middle fusiform gyrus (fusiform face area) and the superior temporal sulcus” (Otsuka, 2014, p. 81)]. But the system of face recognition is far more basic, exhibiting sensitivity for the overall arrangement of the separate facial features (e.g., eyes, mouth, ears, etc.), as well as evidence indicating a variety of specialized mechanisms for detecting gaze and the expression of emotions. The prominence of eyes in psychedelic art (i.e., Alex Grey) illustrates the prominent operation of this innate module in psychedelic experiences (also see in excess of 24 million hits for “psychedelic eye art” on Google).

Evolutionary psychology (i.e., Barkow, Leda, & Tooby, 1992; Carruthers & Chamberlain, 2000; Confer et al., 2010) has explanations of why we experience supernatural entities so naturally. Evolutionary psychology explains a variety of psychological phenomena as the result of biological adaptations and their behavioral, psychological, cognitive, and social functions. Evolutionary approaches to human psychology have discovered that the human mind exhibits modularity, the result of the acquisition of a separate innate modules or operators that provide specific cognitive functions (Gardner, 1983, 2000). The operation of these modules reflects capacities acquired in the course of Hominin Evolution through natural selection, particularly solutions to challenges faced by our ancestors and their hunting and gathering lifestyle.

The evolution of the human mind [Mithen (1996) has shown how the concept of innate modules explains human cognitive and social evolution. Innately disposed modular capacities are key to understanding the emergence of human cognitive uniqueness involving capacities for representation through imitation (mimesis), highly controlled physical behavior (tool use), natural history knowledge (animal behavior), social psychology (social relations and mind), and communication (music and language). Mithen proposes that it was the integration of these various modular functions that was the final cause of the major expansions in human cognitive evolution, with language serving as the mechanism through which information was exchanged among modules. Winkelman (2002, 2010) has shown how the effects of ritual alterations of consciousness drove these integrative processes through their manifestations in a visual modality of consciousness] involved the acquisition of specialized programs, hardwired input systems that provide for automatic information processing. These psychological adaptations respond to delimited forms of information and produce a functional output designed to provide a solution to a specific problem regularly encountered in adaptation, particularly in social relations. This evolution of specialized modular thought operators is reflected in specialized reasoning abilities in higher primates that provide cognitive functions for managing social relationships (Cummings & Allen, 1998). Prominent among these abilities are reasoning about hierarchies and coalitions and strategies for manipulating the beliefs and behaviors of others, using a “theory of mind” to infer the motives and reasoning of others in society.

A range of findings supports a view of the human mind as manifesting a variety of unconscious functions that operate through an integrated assembly of many functionally specialized modular psychological adaptations [these adaptations are not discrete anatomical entities but are recognized because of a number of factors. These include the complexity of the behavior, the economy of function and efficiency of design, and their precision in achieving specific outcomes (Confer et al., 2010)]. The evidence that Gardner (2000) cites as establishing innate intelligences includes an explanation for their existence based on evolutionary plausibility; their role as central core cognitive operations for social life; their isolated dysfunction as a result of damage to specific brain regions; their manifestation in idiot savants and child prodigies with otherwise limited cognitive capacities; a high facility for their encoding in symbol systems; and support for their existence from experimental and psychometric studies.

Cross-cultural homologies in forms or functions of cognition involve what Laughlin, McManus, and d’Aquili (1992) call neurognostic structures, the neurobiological structures of knowing that provide the universal aspects of the human brain/mind. These neurophenomenological relations involve inherent knowledge structures of the organism that mediate the organization of experience into certain forms; these inherent structures underlie concepts such as archetypes, which are conceptualized as an ancient mode of organization of the experiences of the collective unconscious. Cross-cultural similarities in mythic accounts led the psychologist Carl Jung to propose the term archetype to represent the innate ways in which our mental hardware perceives reality as a consequence of acquired structures for representing universal aspects of human experiences. These innate dispositions of all human minds, our collective unconscious, provide the impulses that are represented in symbols and myths (summarized from Winkelman & Baker, 2016).

Other innate structures of perception are discussed by Gardner (2000, p. 57), who identified 10 basic innate intelligences (Table 1). These capacities are inherent to the potentials of our species, but they are differentially developed as a function of individual differences, socialization influences, and environmental exposures. d’Aquili and Newberg (1999) characterize these potentials as innate systems that function not as encapsulated physical modules, but as conceptual operators linking functional components across areas of the brain that provide specific functions. They propose a number of innate modular systems that constitute the typical default processing capacities of the mind (d’Aquili & Newberg, 1999; Table 2)

Table 1. Gardner’s (1983, 2000) types of innate intelligences Original intelligences An intrapersonal intelligence for looking in at one’s own mind and the ability to use awareness of one’s own capacities, desires, needs, and knowledge in achieving goals and regulating one’s emotional life and relations with others. An interpersonal intelligence, a capacity to work effectively with others through an understanding of their motivations and intentions, engaging a “theory of mind” to infer others’ mental processes. A capacity for linguistic intelligence (actually involves several capacities). A logical-mathematical reasoning capacity for carrying out mathematical processes to solve problems, a capacity that manifests in extreme forms in the idiot savants with superhuman math processing capacities. A bodily-kinesthetic intelligence manifested in mimesis, dancing, and the capacity to use the body to solve problems and build things. A musical intelligence to create and perform with sound and instruments. A spatial intelligence for creating patterns in space, ranging from navigation skills to sculpturers. Additional intelligences A naturalist intelligence that “demonstrates expertise in the recognition and classification of the numerous species – the flora and fauna – of his or her environment” (2000, p. 36). This provides a capacity to recognize species, differentiate among species, and to identify relations between and among species. A spiritual intelligence manifested in “a desire to know about experiences and cosmic entities that are not readily apprehended in a material sense” (2000, p. 40) and providing skills in meditating, entering alterations of consciousness, and engaging with spiritual, noetic, and transcendent experiences. Within this spiritual intelligence is a personal quality that Gardner called charisma, an ability to engage in a powerful emotional contact with others that also instills in them the quest for this spiritual awareness. An existential intelligence that reflects the cognitive aspects manifested in the spiritual intelligence, “an ability to locate oneself with respect to the furthest reaches of the cosmos,… the significance of life, the meaning of death,… a concern with cosmic issues” (p. 44).

Table 2. Innate cognitive operators (Newberg & d’Aquili, 2001) A causal operator that prompts the mind to interpret experiences of the universe as a sequence of specific causes and effects, providing mechanisms of supersensible forces and powers to fulfill such explanations when direct evidence is lacking. A holistic operator that perceives a “wholeness in the midst of diversity” (p. 190), a view of reality as an integrated whole, giving humans an experience of the absolute and transcendent. A binary operator that reduces complicated relationships to simple pairs of opposites. A reductionist operator that allows the mind to see a whole broken down into component parts. A quantitative operator with the capacity of abstraction of quantity from perception, engaging in operations to provide estimations of number, time, and distance. A eureka operator that provides rapid problem-solving that reaches the consciousness suddenly through unconscious processes rather than by trial and error. Several linguistic operators, one related to speech and based on neocortical components involving Broca’s area, and one for understanding of meanings involving Wernicke’s area.

Based on Maclean’s (1973, 1990) work, Ernandes (2013) discusses operators relevant to human cognition as involving a territorial operator, a hierarchic operator, a space operator, a time operator, a sequence operator, a display meaning or semiotic operator for interpretation of behavior and non-verbal communication that operates both in relationships among members of the same species as well as in interaction with different species, including the symbolic codification of behavior in primates. One of the mammalian operators involves nursing and other components of maternal care that use audiovocal communication and oxytocin release to enhance dopamine-mediated attachment dynamics to enhance maternal–offspring contact and bonding. Relevant here are both the attachment operator for establishing bonds between mother and offspring; and a “falling in love” operator that mediates the formation of coupling and pair bonding.

Ernandes proposes that some behavioral operators managed by the mammalian R-complex include “the nutrition/homeostatic operator, for food and water needs;” “the specific operator, which allows for the acquisition of a species’ identity;” “the sexual operator” and the “play operator,” which provide behavioral and cognitive functions; and emotional operators, especially “fear operator” and “aggression operators,” including a predatory aggression and intraspecific aggression operators.

Universal human emotions (sadness, happiness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise) are also cases of highly specialized neural operators that make such experiences present across cultures. Damasio (1999) characterizes emotions as core biological processes based in innate brain devices that play a regulatory role through non-conscious processes that are manifested in the body. Emotions have biological roles of producing specific reactions to situations that require specific types of responses, which require action from aspects of our evolved biology that helps regulate survival behaviors. This biological machinery produces stereotyped response patterns – emotions – that are experienced as feelings and manifested in images. Consciousness emerges as the organism comes to know and experience its own emotions as information, extending the capacity to maintain homeostasis and adapt to the environment.

Modular capacities in the production of supernatural experiences The cognitive science of religion (e.g., see Clements, 2017) has shown how the widespread human belief in the spirit world (and its virtual universality as a cultural belief) results from basic brain operators. This widespread human tendency to perceive animate entities wherever we look is a consequence of the automatic operation of modular capacities. This tendency is derived from the functions of a variety of innate human capacities (Boyer, 1992, 2001; Guthrie, 1993). Barrett (2000) proposed that supernatural belief is a direct function of a hyperactive agent-detection device (HADD). This is an automatic tendency to project the interpretation of an active agent responsible for ambiguous events. The basic function of the HADD is to attribute the intention of some agent as the cause of unexplained phenomena. This agency detection function or agency operator (Ernandes proposes that while the agency operator may acquire a rational component from the involvement of the neocortex’s causal operator, its basis is in reptilian and limbic operators) expanded in its functions across the course of primate evolution to enhance our capacity for detection of predators. This natural selection resulted in adaptations that were overly sensitive for the detection of agency because erroneous responses (false positives) had few costs in comparison to the possible loss of life resulting from the failure to detect the presence of a predator. We are hypertuned to detect an active intentional agent where information is ambiguous or incomplete, and the perception of entities during psychedelic experiences would be a clear example of such decision-making. This projection is facilitated by the human expansion of the assumptions of an “unseen other” with assumptions regarding the status, mental states, and intentions of these others. The human capacity for modeling others’ cognitive states using our previous experiences makes it inevitable that we project our human cognitive dynamics into the interpretation of ambiguous circumstances we interpret as involving others. The unknown and ambiguous experiences within nature are animated with the projections of our own psychodynamics as the framework for the interpretation, giving our internal dynamics as the basis of our perceptions of the unknown. Thus, the ancient innate capacity for agency detection was further honed in humans for detection of human-like agents, making nature humanized (anthropomorphized) with our own self properties, social characteristics, and emotional qualities. The experiences of spirits reflect the human capacity for a “theory of mind;” this capacity to infer the mental states and intentions of others is discussed by Gardner (2000) in terms of an innate intrapersonal intelligence. The intrapersonal intelligence is a metacognitive operator that provides an awareness of the contents of one’s own mental states and the ability to relate that awareness to circumstances in the social and physical environment. This same capacity for representing our own mental states allows for the “theory of the mind,” a capacity for an inferred awareness of the contents of other people’s minds. Ernandes (2013) characterizes this innate function of “theory of mind” as providing capacities for meta-representation, a metacognitive “thinking about thinking,” including thinking about the mental states of others, providing forms of “mindreading” and “mental state attribution” revealing the likely internal states of others. The ability to assess others’ motives and intentions and the implications that these have for our self involves using our own self-models for representations of the mental states of those others. Interpersonal intelligence is a social psychological operator for the internalization of the identities and properties of others. This interpersonal intelligence is a key concept for understanding a necessary aspect of human social behavior, the capacity to assume the perspectives, and the identity of social others. Collective human behavior is dependent upon processes of individual internalization of and identification with the properties of social others, especially dominant others. These processes are fundamental to human socialization and identity formation, and provide a basis for the internalization of norms and adopting for our own self the models and perspectives exhibited by socially significant others. This capacity also induces us to accept the notion of significant others with expectations for our behavior. Spirits are typically conceptualized as being like persons with normal human minds and desires, perceive events, formulate beliefs regarding the world, and act to carry out specific intentions that are reasonable to the intuitive frameworks of humans (Winkelman, 2004). Projection of a concept of a human-like entity is an inevitable part of how humans conceptualize the unknown. We project human characteristics and an expectation of human-like entities, an inevitable aspect of default human cognitive function derived from adaptations to conditions in which we benefitted from knowing the expectations of human others and their thoughts and attitudes about us that we internalized as scripts for our self. Our brains are further wired to detect the specific goals of the behaviors of others, embodied in the mirror neurons that fire when one performs an action – as well as when perceiving another doing the same action. This mimetic operator (Ernandes notes that the mimetic operator, localized in the amygdalar complex of the paleomammalian brain, also plays a central role in the modulation of facial expression) is an extension of a basic or communicative operator found across species, the isopraxic operator. This drives an individual to mentally represent and perform the actions observed in the behaviors of another member of the species. In humans, this isopraxic operator is extended in mimesis through the operation of mirror neurons (Garrels, 2005, 2011). Ernandes notes that a function of isopraxic operators is to produce a pattern in which animals of a group all behave in the same way. These capacities are a fundamental tool for conspecific recognition, entailing an awareness that an “other” is like one’s self, a member of one’s own species group. Religious concepts of supernatural agency and causation reflect uses of a number of innate psychological systems that are linked together in ways that provided adaptive responses to the developmental and communication needs of more complex social groups. Pyysiäinen (2009, p. 13) proposed that the general dynamic of religious behavior combines the operation of the hyperactive agency detection with two other operators that he calls the “hyperactive understanding of intentionality device,” “the tendency to postulate mentality and see events as intentionally caused even in the absence of a visible agent” (Pyysiäinen, 2009, p. 13) and the “hyperactive teleofunctional reasoning device,” a “tendency to see objects as existing for a purpose.” The innate nature of these reasoning processes is revealed in studies of children’s natural tendency to offer pervasive teleological explanations of events they experience, postulating an intentional design by a supernatural agency. Newberg and d’Aquili (2001) similarly characterize the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying religious experiences and behaviors as primarily involving a causal operator and a holistic operator. The innate function of the causal operator provides mechanisms of supersensible forces and powers to fulfill explanations with cause and effect mechanisms when direct evidence is lacking. The holistic operator perceives a wholeness to reality, an integrated whole that provides an experience of the absolute and transcendent. This use by religion of modular functions of the social mind provides an understanding of how supernatural thought involved exaptations of previous modules, new adaptations targeted by natural selection to enhance social behaviors through the use of natural symbols, such as animal representations of social groups manifested in totemism. Cross-cultural similarities manifested in shamanistic and mystical traditions reflect underlying innate modules which are reflected in experiences related to those modular functions, such as animal identities, soul flight, death-and-rebirth, visions, and emotions of bliss, detachment, and void (Winkelman, 2010). The operation of modules and operators in the production of religious behavior is not their independent function, but their combination to create a general model that links various elements of reality together to provide general explanatory models of how the universe operates (Ernandes, 2013). These combinations of innate intelligences are key aspects of how supernatural experiences contributed to new forms of intelligence, constituting symbols derived from the integration of operations from different cognitive modules (Winkelman, 2010). This combination of modules in the production of supernatural thought may have begun in the linking of the natural history or animal species module to the modules for personal and social identity. For instance, concepts of animacy and nature beings mix properties of personal and natural modules, while totemic groups represent the production of social identities with animal elements, exploiting modules for representing the natural world (Winkelman, 2010). These beliefs involve the activation of the naturalist or natural history intelligence. This prehistoric hunter–gatherers’ intuitive biology that provided a template for learning about animals was extended as a system to organize information in other domains of significance, in particular, for thinking about personal and social identity. Consequently, an innate intelligence regarding animals provided the basis for creating a universal analogical system for extension of meaning through animal metaphors as representations of personal and social identity; these provide powerful adaptations for integrating social groups (one of the most prevalent aspects of “animal” thought is found in shamanistic incorporation of animal spirits and their abilities. Typically, these animals provide a personal social relationship and aspect of personality and personal powers, or as a group symbol for spiritual and collective relationship to the group. This use of the animal world also provided a natural system of knowledge for organizing relations within a group and between societies. Totemism provides a system for differentiating societies by means of analogy, using the innate differences existing among species to represent society, representing differences among humans through the innately recognized differences among species of animals. These cognitive inventions of shamanism were a natural outcome of the integration of the different innate modules caused by ritual alterations of consciousness. These modes of experience provide access to different aspects of the self, including animal selves, as well as the disembodied self or an out-of-body experience) (Winkelman, 2010).

Hypotheses of innate functions in entity experiences The appearance of different innate operators in entity experiences, including the sequences of presentation and co-occurrence, should follow patterns that reflect the sequential effects of psychedelics on neurotransmitter systems, the modular operators, and the operation of the triune brain. Hypothesis 4: The central shared properties across psychedelic and other types of entity experiences are a direct reflection of innate social modules, which will be exhibited much more than cognitive operators (i.e., mathematical–logical, language). The fact that these are perceived as entities with social significance means that the social operators are being activated. Hypothesis 5: Psychedelics will produce entity experiences that manifest the lack of specific innate modules (i.e., absence of space, time, language abilities, and logical–mathematical reasoning). These innate capacities that do not manifest in psychedelic entity experiences should be explicable in terms of modular systems that are deactivated by psychedelics (i.e., the default mode network and the lack of sense of self). Hypothesis 6: The features distinguishing different subtypes of psychedelic entity experiences will involve different interrelated configurations of innate operators. The hypothesis that entity experiences derive from the stimulation and release of the human modular brain functions should receive support from findings that the core distinguishing features of different subtypes of entity experiences are a reflection of the natural interactions among our innate operators (such as simultaneous experiences maternal love and suckling and infantile forms versus anger, dominance, and aggression). Hypothesis 7: There are patterns in the sequences of operators that are manifested in the psychedelic entity experiences that reflect sequences of psychedelic action on the brain. A predictable sequence of features experienced under the influence of psychedelics would support hypotheses of entity experiences as a direct result of their brain interference. The sequences of experiences under psychedelics will reflect the order of effects on major brain and neurotransmitter systems and their consequences for the stimulation and release of these innate modules. The emergence of modular operator features in psychedelic (entity) experiences will directly reflect the sequences of return of brain functions after their destabilization by psychedelic interference with neurotransmission functions.