The MIT Press eBooks
December 16, 2025
Zohar Maliniak
The conference I attended in Neve Shalom, which addressed the study of consciousness, was especially impor tant to me.It provided me with an opportunity to engage in an enlightening and inspiring meeting with a wide range of individuals and scholars for whom the mystery of human cognition and consciousness is a burning question.This meeting of philosophers, neurobiologists, scholars of culture,...
The MIT Press eBooks
December 16, 2025
Christopher Timmermann
Psychedelic compounds act on specific brain pro cesses, which can lead to rich experiences of wide phenomenological breadth.Because of this, psychedelic phenomena pre sent a unique opportunity to explore the tension between the objective and the subjective.However, in-depth first-person approaches fostering inquiry into the psychedelic experience are still underdeveloped in psychedelic science...
The MIT Press eBooks
December 16, 2025
Ulrich Ott
elucidate the brain dynamics of non-ordinary experiences like "non-duality" and "egodissolution" by combining phenomenological assessment with modern brain imaging technology.In this chapter, I describe (1) typical features of mystical experiences (see glossary);(2) situations, personality traits, and methods that facilitate their occurrence; and (3) recent findings regarding their pos si ble...
The MIT Press eBooks
October 7, 2025
Graham St John
1 citation
An intellectual biography of one of the most celebrated and yet least understood figures of the late twentieth century, Terence McKenna. A stand-up philosopher who made a unique contribution to science, humanism, and the hidden arts, Terence McKenna (1946–2000) was the twentieth century’s psychedelic Renaissance man. Perfecting his rugged philosophy on the role of psychedelics in evolution,...
The MIT Press eBooks
August 6, 2024
Benjamin D Young
1 citation
The nature of olfaction; its importance for understanding perennial issues of philosophy of mind, perception, and consciousness; and its implications for cognitive neuroscience. What are smells? Despite the best efforts of philosophy and the chemosciences, the question remains vexing—but no more perplexing than the historical lapse of the past few centuries to seriously consider a sense that...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
Lay down and almost immediately snapped into the Basal Clarity. [#3058]The lucidity was so shocking that I had the experience of falling out of the dream, down into a space that was a vast, limitless, empty void but also filled completely with pure awareness.[#105]
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
When openness touches openness.[#1444] For many centuries, meditators have been describing states of direct perception, the experience of seeing what is.Meditation involves a distinct phenomenology of perceiving, timelessly, without any conceptual overlay or any form of judgment, interpretation, or choice.Seeing what is out of a state of pure awareness often reveals another par tic u lar and...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
Like a contented stone [#808] Every thing comes, every thing goes.I or rather It rests.There is nothing I have to do.It is easy.[#2511] Imagine that you discovered that what really creates satisfaction in life has nothing to do with achieving goals, or even with acting in any specific way.Imagine that you discovered this not in some intellectual or philosophical way, but as an unexpected and...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
Infinite simultaneity" and yet wide awake.[#2312] One classic definition of pure awareness is "restful alertness."There is a quality of relaxation and calm (see chapter 1), but also an ele ment of nonagentive vigilance, of attentiveness without doing.We now turn to this ele ment, the experience of being fully alert.Interestingly, modern science tells us that there is more than one kind of...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
A bodilessness in the consciousness of a body [#302] My body dissolves into a micro-foam of impermanence, zooming into the fractal edge of pre sent which endlessly unfurls fern-fronds of scintillating *now*-fuzz.[#1832]The experience seems to be similar to a thread which forms a seam and holds on one side the body and on the other side infinity together, so both are there and yet they are not...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
A well looks at a donkey, not vice versa [#33] Self-image and infinity somehow fell into one.[#3024] One of the many things that make a more genuinely philosophical meditation practice so in ter est ing is that some of its aspects can be taught, while others can't.Some things you simply have to find out for yourself.Before we start, let us do a little demo.Be assured that you do not have to be...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
Without an observer.Nobody on the cushion meditating.Every thing on the cushion meditating.[#635] I perceived subject and object as the same substance, facing each other like the two inner surfaces of a folded sheet of paper.As if subject and object were created by folding the fundamental substance and the observer were placed arbitrarily on one of the two sides.[#2916] There was a...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
It was as if my body / my being was pixelated and dissolved into the rest of the pixels that make up the entirety of every thing else.[#3086] There are countless ways in which the experience of pure awareness can shift from background to foreground.The phenomenology of translucency is one way: "It's like real ity shining through when all ideas, concepts . . .step aside for a moment" (#2528; see...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
A constant still presence that cannot be touched by words, does not live in the realm of objects.[#789] I was very pre sent, but not there.[. ..]Pure existence.[#2943]The quality of "presence" is a central feature of what it feels like to abide in pure awareness.But we must be careful, because "presence" may actually mean slightly dif fer ent things to dif fer ent people.One reading of...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
A bit like balancing a ball on a stick, the moment when it is in balance is characterized by lightness and naturalness, but is at the same time very difficult to hold.[#1457] It is difficult to put into words, but through meditation I can create conditions (by relaxing into the moment) and it comes or not, like grace [#2714]This chapter unites three major topics: the phenomenology of...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
There is no waking, there is no sleeping, there is only being.[#1784] Contemplative practice is related to sleep in a number of in ter est ing ways.First, many dozens of our experiential reports emphasize how deeply relaxing, restful, and refreshing it is to spend a while abiding in the wakeful presence of bare awareness.What is more, the relationship between our subjectively experienced target...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
First, many meditators report a phenomenal character of spatiality as such, a vast openness lacking any more concrete frame of reference.Often, we find this coemerging with some of the specific experiential qualities we have already investigated, like existential ease, simplicity, brightness, unity, a velvety character, high precision, clarity, wakefulness, and connectedness.Here are ten...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
The world reflecting in a mirror without a perceiving observer.[#1735] An impression of " there are impersonal eyes in the room."[#3451] "Witness consciousness" is a global phenomenology.This is to say that the totality of all experiential contents appears as if being observed by something that isn't really an "observer" at all-by a timeless, impersonal, knowing presence.Witness consciousness...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
Our reports show that the phenomenology of "pure being" can either be the sole defining characteristic of a full-absorption episode or coexist with other forms of experiential content.Next, you will find nine examples of the phenomenal quality that I am trying to isolate here.Note that some of the descriptors explored in earlier chapters-like "body dissolution," "peace," "silence,"...
The MIT Press eBooks
November 21, 2023
Zoë Dubus
2 citations
International audience
The MIT Press eBooks
November 21, 2023
Ido Hartogsohn, Itamar Zadoff
2 citations
As of 2021, Israel is positioned at the forefront of a global revival of psychedelic research and culture.The small Middle Eastern country hosts clinical trials with psychedelics, generates multiple psychedelic start-ups, and hosts a pioneering psychedelic therapy training program.Popu lar interest in psychedelics is surging throughout the country as well, with multiple conferences, podcasts,...
The MIT Press eBooks
November 21, 2023
Ross Crockford
1 citation
Hausner originally doubted that she could be helped.But as he listened to a recording of Hana's third LSD session, he saw some hope."The most pronounced aspect of this session is her archetypal regression into the realm of antiquity and to the very beginnings of humanity," Hausner later wrote. 1 "Hana is beginning to formulate a new attitude toward death and eternity."Over the next six months,...
The MIT Press eBooks
November 21, 2023
Gautier Dassonneville
1 citation
In this chapter, I examine the undocumented history of mescaline in medical and psychiatric circles in France by reconstructing the scientific context in which Jean-Paul Sartre's famous bad trip took place in February 1935. 1 In this way, we can first consider that the very term "bad trip," sometimes ascribed to the experience retrospectively 2 on the basis of accounts by Simone de Beauvoir...
The MIT Press eBooks
November 21, 2023
Julien Bonhomme
1 citation
International audience
The MIT Press eBooks
November 21, 2023
Stephen Snelders
1 citation
Dutch psychedelic history had its own characteristics. In psychiatry, LSD therapy was used for the management of the traumas of World War II; in Dutch society, overlapping groups of activists and psychedelics users were involved in a playful transformation of society into a “Magical Center”; and in economics, the Netherlands became a key player in the illegal production and distribution of LSD...