The Gateway Experience Facilitates Psychological Well-Being.

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of the Gateway Experience (GE) on psychological well-being. The GE has been developed several decades ago for the induction of altered states of consciousness. It incorporates several techniques such as hypnosis, meditation, and binaural beats, which are known to facilitate well-being, sleep, learning and memory, and emotional states, but have not been tested in the exact combination used by the GE. Twelve participants with no prior experience in meditation and related techniques were exposed to the GE (i.e. experimental condition) and a relaxation treatment (i.e. control condition) over the course of four weeks. Psychological well-being was measured at multiple timepoints using Ryff's Psychological Well-being Scale (PWS) which includes 18 items measuring six aspects of psychological well-being: Autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. Results of a two-way repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance showed that participants' psychological well-being improved significantly over time in the GE condition compared to the control condition on all measured scales. There was no effect of participants' sense of mysticality as measured by the Barrett's Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ30). Mysticality has been suggested before to potentially influence the GE. These findings are in line with the theory and suggest that the GE could be a powerful tool to facilitate psychological well-being even in the short-term. Moreover, our findings are also relevant to our understanding of the GE from a historical point of view.