Mecca Diaries

Mecca Diaries
Hajj is the world’s largest annual pilgrimage that takes place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Last year VICE Founder Suroosh Alvi went with his family and shot footage with an old Handicam. His intention was never to make a VBS doc out of it, but lo and behold here it is…shaky camerawork and all. The next...
March 23rd, 2010 | Spirituality | Read More

EYE SPIRITS

EYE SPIRITS
It had been many years since I had last seen Don, one of my favourite college lecturers, so I was delighted to bump into him at a conference.  Back in the old college days he had been something of a Sean Connery look-a-like and was much admired by the girl students, so it was a shock to see him now...
March 18th, 2010 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Prayer: A Challenge for Science

Prayer: A Challenge for Science
Since ancient times, a strong and pervasive belief in the efficacy of prayer–for the living and the dead–reinforces the notion that consciousness is not limited to the physical body. Not only do traditions throughout the world share a belief that prayers may in some way help (or invoke help from)...
March 11th, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

Can You Find Consciousness In The Brain?

Can You Find Consciousness In The Brain?
MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those...
February 23rd, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

LSD for the NHS?

LSD for the NHS?
This recent article from The Financial Times reports on the scientific progress the Beckley Foundation has been making in the last few years. A British charity is stepping up efforts to rehabilitate LSD, one of the world’s best-known “recreational” drugs, for medicinal use. The Beckley Foundation,...
February 16th, 2010 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Evolvers Spores: The Future of Psychedelics

Evolvers Spores: The Future of Psychedelics
Evolver.net, MAPS, the Beckley Foundation, and Brainwaving present Evolvers Spores: The Future of Psychedelics For millennia, cultures around the world expanded minds and visions with “teacher plants” – what we commonly know today as psychedelics. The widespread popularity of LSD during the 1960s...
February 10th, 2010 | Altered States | Read More

Psychedelics and Species Connectedness

Psychedelics and Species Connectedness
Evidence suggests that at the very least the consumption of psychedelic substances leads to an increased concern for Nature and ecological issues. On one level we can understand that this may be due to a basic appreciation of place and aesthetics that accompanies the increased sensory experience, or...
February 8th, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

The Shaman’s Renaissance

The Shaman’s Renaissance
A new religion is spreading to Britain – its central sacrament the consumption of a hallucinogenic Class A drug. Here’s a report from the faith’s heartland in the rainforests of the Amazon I am deep in the Amazon rainforest, anxiously losing my mind as the world begins to disintegrate....
February 1st, 2010 | Spirituality | Read More

Can we crack the Consciousness Puzzle?

Can we crack the Consciousness Puzzle?
CONSCIOUS experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and the most mysterious. There is nothing we know about more directly than consciousness, but it is extraordinarily hard to reconcile it with everything else we know. Why does it exist? What does it do? How could it possibly arise from...
January 28th, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

Quining Qualia

Quining Qualia
Dan Dennett’s seminal argument about the properties conscious experience is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of whether the mind/conscious experience is reducible to purely physical/scientific terms. You may not think he’s right, but he’s certainly worth a read… 1....
January 26th, 2010 | Science of the Mind | Read More
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »