Posts Tagged ‘religious experience’

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

MUSHROOMS IN WONDERLAND

MUSHROOMS IN WONDERLAND
Was Alice in Wonderland and Victorian fairy art and lore in general inspired by actual experiences with mind-altering fungi? The first well-documented hallucinogenic mushroom experience in Britain took place in London’s Green Park on 3 October 1799. Like many such experiences before and since,...
March 1st, 2010 | Arts | Read More

Placebos – Is Mind more important than Matter?

Placebos – Is Mind more important than Matter?
In a review of recent research, international experts say there is increasing evidence that fake treatments, or placebos, have an actual biological effect in the body. The doctor-patient relationship, plus the expectation of recovery, may sometimes be enough to change a patient’s brain, body and...
February 19th, 2010 | Health & Happiness | Read More

The Men Who Really Stare At Goats

The Men Who Really Stare At Goats
Three years in the making, Jon Ronson’s “Crazy Rulers of the World” explores the apparent madness at the heart of US military intelligence. With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary and plain bizarre national secrets at the core...
February 11th, 2010 | Social Insight | 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

Do we need a New Eleusis?

Do we need a New Eleusis?
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who was first to synthesise LSD and the first to taste its awesome power, died in April last year at the grand age of 102. Twelve years earlier, I was fortunate enough to have dinner with the grand old man; we talked about many things, but his vision of the need for...
February 5th, 2010 | Health & Happiness | 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

KISS ME / KILL ME

KISS ME / KILL ME
If our understanding of the mechanisms of the world could fit in a library, then ideally ‘Love’ would be a single fat volume on a plinth of its own. Where it would actually be found is printed on a sticker on an interminable shelf in the Reference section. Manuals would be archived chronologically,...
January 28th, 2010 | Arts | Read More
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