Posts Tagged ‘religious experience’

Deers of Perception

These reindeer have been fed a mushroom that makes their urine hallucinogenic. Or have they? Sam Williams visits Carsten Höller’s new ‘scientific experiment’ What could be more festive than spending a night locked in an art gallery with a dozen reindeer and a fridge full of psychedelic...

January 28th, 2011 | Health & Happiness | Read More

Drugs: the highs and lows

Natural or synthetic, legal or illegal, people have been taking drugs for thousands of years. High Society, a new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, explores the culture of getting out of it By the end of planning her new exhibition, Caroline Fisher had come to an interesting conclusion. “It’s...

December 14th, 2010 | Arts | Read More

Acoustic Archaeology Yielding Mind-Tripping Tricks

Recently uncovered sound effects include a clapping echo that sounds like a jungle bird. THE GIST Acoustic archaeology is an emerging field that melds acoustical analysis and old-fashioned bone-hunting. Ancient people created fun house-like temples that featured scary sound effects. Some of the sites...

December 14th, 2010 | Spirituality | Read More

Was the poisoning of a French town in 1951 an LSD trial?

On August 16th 1951 a number of people in the quiet southern French town of Pont St.Esprit began to fall ill. Stomach pains were soon followed by violent and often terrifying hallucinations. Local hospitals were soon overwhelmed and more than thirty people were taken to asylums in nearby towns. It was...

August 25th, 2010 | Social Insight | Read More

Drugs That Shape Men’s Minds

Aldous Huxley’s acclaimed essay about man’s inclination towards intoxication and the potential for good and evil that drugs represent In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country. The craving for ethyl...

August 4th, 2010 | Drug Policy | Read More

Psychedelic Technologies

Imagine… you are strolling along the Esplanade at Burning Man, and something catches your eye. Bands of lights are rapidly moving up and down a 30 foot high pyramid, from Red at the bottom, through Orange, Green, Turquoise, Indigo, Violet, and finally White light at the top. Nothing too unusual,...

July 26th, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More

The Anti-Psychic’s Challenge

Legendary skeptic James Randi takes a fatal dose of homeopathic sleeping pills onstage, kicking off a searing 18-minute indictment of irrational beliefs. He throws out a challenge to the world’s psychics: Prove what you do is real, and I’ll give you a million dollars. (No takers yet.)

July 20th, 2010 | Extended Mind | Read More

A Ladies’ Man and Shameless

Das ewig weibliche zieht uns hinan. The eternally feminine leads us forward. – Goethe He who binds himself to a joy does the winged life destroy, But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in Eternity’s sunrise. – William Blake Only connect. – E. M. Forster I‘m finally...

July 13th, 2010 | Social Insight | Read More

“WATSON: THE NEEDLE!”

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND COCAINE By Mike Jay – http://mikejay.net/ Cocaine was the great pharmaceutical success story of the last decades of the nineteenth century. In a few short years, it went from a minor item in specialist catalogues to a major seller in a huge range of preparations in high-street...

July 1st, 2010 | Arts | Read More

DMT and the Pineal: Fact or Fiction?

A well-known factoid bandied about by psychedelic drug geeks is the idea that DMT, or some other psychoactive tryptamine, is produced by the pineal gland. When did this idea originate? And is it actually true? By John Hanna for Erowid.org During his talk “Psychoactive Drugs Throughout Human History”...

June 8th, 2010 | Altered States | Read More