Religion Unburdened by Belief: Mysticism, Psychedelics, and Mental Health with Joshua Pritikin

What if the less you believe, the closer you actually get to genuine religious experience?Joshua Pritikin, PhD, is an Internal Family Systems Certified Practitioner and author of Religion Unburdened by Belief. Before counseling individuals and couples in Oregon, he spent years building financial software on Wall Street and earned his PhD in Quantitative Psychology from the University of Virginia. He's also the grandson of Nathan Pritikin, creator of the Pritikin health program.In this episode, Joshua unpacks the paradox behind his book's title, how trauma and dissociation show up inside both religious and psychedelic experience, and why sequencing matters as much as substance when it comes to psychedelic readiness. He also brings a therapist's lens to the AI conversation, exploring why so many people intuitively grant AI the status of "someone," and what that impulse reveals about human worth.What We Talked About:What's left when you subtract belief from religionHow trauma and healing show up in religious and psychedelic experienceWhy sequencing matters more than substance in psychedelic readinessUsing Internal Family Systems to understand our relationship with AIA structured pathway toward realizing human potentialConnect with Joshua Pritikin:Website: unburdened.bizYouTube: linked on his profile