Abstract Grégoire Schlemmer investigates the multi-layered meanings of belonging and sacred geography through an ethnographic study of Lake Salpa in Nepal. This remote, high-altitude holy waterbody serves as a convergence point for diverse groups, including caste Hindus, Buddhists, and the indigenous Kulung Rai. The author shows how different communities map their own unique cosmologies onto...
Abstract Psychedelic substances such as psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, DMT, or mescaline, when employed with knowledge and skill, can sometimes lead to profoundly meaningful and transformative subjective experiences. This chapter discusses how the predictive processing theory can further our understanding of these deeply meaningful spiritual psychedelic experience. It makes a more specific...
Abstract This chapter examines the debate surrounding the common core thesis of mystical experience by situating contemporary empirical psychology within the longer intellectual history of psychology, philosophy, and theology. It traces how William James and Walter Stace defend the distinction between experience and interpretation, establishing a foundation for a cross-cultural,...
Abstract One hears a great deal about “Russellian physicalism”, “Russellian panpsychism”, and “Russellian monism”. They’re proposed as solutions to the so-called mind–body problem. There is, however, a great deal of unclarity about Russell’s views on this matter. This is partly his own fault. It’s well known that he endorses “neutral monism”, but he’s also prepared to call himself a materialist...
Abstract This chapter traces the development of Bertrand Russell’s philosophy of mind from his early engagements with panpsychism and idealism through his dualist period and finally to his mature neutral monism. It advances three central claims. First, Russell’s positions on the mind are consistently shaped by his sustained engagement with empirical psychology and the natural sciences. Second,...
Abstract This chapter reflects on the legacy of the sacred dance arena known as the ring shout, a legacy which stretches to include both jazz scat singing and speaking in tongues. The ring shout was a sacred praise-ritual that was danced, originating in the enslaved African American communities of the blackbelt South. It involved the formation of a counter-clockwise rotating circle of devotees...
Abstract Nightmare disorder is a rapid-eye-movement (REM) parasomnia provoking disturbing oneiric activity and significant distress. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the diagnostic criteria and definition of this sleep disorder. The authors reviewed findings on neural correlates of nightmares, also examining the changes over the life span. They describe the most common comorbid...
Abstract Contemplative practices are increasingly mainstream in the United States. From meditation, mindfulness, and yoga to writing, walking, and gardening, contemplative practices aim to cultivate embodied awareness, attunement, and attention. What is the political value of the attentional ecologies created by the Mindfulness Revolution? This book explores the democratic possibility contained...
Abstract The authors review the evidence for overlap in neurophysiologic, cognitive, and phenomenological features of REM sleep dreams and the psychedelic state. REM sleep and dreams contribute in complex ways to the phenomenology of both religious experiences and psychedelic experiences via intrusion of components of REM neurophysiology into waking consciousness or the psychedelic state. The...
Abstract There is a history of psychedelics and entheogens in twentieth- and twenty-first century in the context of neo-gnostic elements from contemporary popular authors and scholars including Christopher Bache, Jonathan Phillips, Erik Davis, and Daniel Pinchbeck. In particular the scholarly work of Christopher Partridge provides some context. Christopher Bache’s work also clearly has a...
Abstract This is the first of three chapters that look at the religious and spiritual qualities of the seven dream journalists. Here the quality of religious individualism is considered as a defining characteristic of the dream journalists. In contrast to religious communalism, which emphasizes group togetherness and shared beliefs, each of the dream journalists displayed a strong reluctance to...
Abstract This chapter introduces the second of the dream journalists, Myōe Shonin. Born in 1173 ce in Japan, he became an ascetic monk who advocated for religious reforms in the Kegon and Shingon schools of Buddhism. Myōe kept a journal of his dreams, visions, and meditation experiences for more than forty years. The intensity of his desire to emulate as closely as possible the life and being...
Abstract This chapter introduces the use of digital methods for the study of dreams. The volume of material in a long series of dreams can be so great that ordinary methods of dream interpretation need to be supplemented by new tools of data analysis. In this project, a simple word-search method is applied to the dream reports, using the resources of the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb), an...
Abstract This is the third of three chapters that look at the religious and spiritual qualities of the seven dream journalists. Here the quality of religious pluralism is considered as a defining characteristic of the seven dream journalists. In contrast to monistic religiosity, which emphasizes the supreme unity and authority of one God and one way of relating to the divine, each of the dream...
Abstract This chapter discusses findings from patients who have undergone commissurotomy and callosotomy using lateralization techniques. Commissurotomy is a neurosurgical procedure that aims to prevent seizure activity from generalizing from one hemisphere across the corpus callosum to the other. Complete commissurotomy patients are known as split-brain subjects. The chapter first reviews the...
Abstract Following a decades-long hiatus and building on an innovative research model first developed from the 1960s to 1970s utilizing psychedelic therapeutics to alleviate the marked psychic distress in end-of-life cancer patients, major academic centers are resuming contemporary clinical research into the safety and efficacy of psilocybin and other serotonergic psychedelics delivered in...
Abstract The Indigenous cultures of South America developed a diverse array of traditional uses for psychoactive plants. This chapter surveys the historical and anthropological literatures on these practices. Pre-Columbian usage, later labeled as idolatry, was transformed by European colonization of the Americas. However, chroniclers such as Sahagun, Hernández, de Acosta, and Monardes, as well...
Philosophy of Psychedelics is the first scholarly monograph in English devoted to the philosophical analysis of psychedelic drugs. Its central focus is the apparent conflict between the growing use of psychedelics in psychiatry and the philosophical worldview of naturalism, which holds that the natural world is all that exists. The book reviews scientific evidence that psychedelics such as...
In this chapter, the author explores the relevant brain networks and their plasticity in response to mindfulness and compassion training. The chapter begins by reviewing how foundational mindfulness practices, in the form of focused attention and open monitoring, set the stage for compassion/loving-kindness training by modulating attentional resources (in the attention networks), regulating...
More than 100 years of retrospective studies show that psychosis is usually preceded by a prodrome. Nonspecific symptoms such as anxiety and depression precede more specific negative and attenuated positive symptoms. Prospective diagnostic criteria have been developed based on the retrospective work. The prospective criteria have shown high reliability in the research context, and follow-up...
This book provides a panoramic view of the state of the art in current philosophical research on consciousness. Featuring some of the most prominent contributors to the field, it explores (1) the wide range of types of consciousness there may be, (2) the many psychological phenomena with which consciousness interacts, and (3) the various views concerning the ultimate relationship between...
This collection provides a guide to the mystical element of Christianity as a theological phenomenon. It differs not only from psychological and anthropological studies of mysticism, but from other theological studies, such as more practical or pastorally oriented works that examine the patterns of spiritual progress and offer counsel for deeper understanding and spiritual development. It also...
Chapter 3, “Psychedelic Birth: The Emergence of the Hippie Midwife,” explores the home birth experience from the perspective of the counterculture. In this context, childbirth became a catalyst to spiritual transcendence. At the same time, new developments in psychiatric research and the proliferation of psychoactive substances created a vibrant, albeit surprising, intellectual exchange between...
This book offers an engaging philosophical overview of Tibetan Buddhist thought. It shows the way that Buddhist theory informs Buddhist practice across various Tibetan traditions in ways that integrate competing and complimentary perspectives on the nature of mind and reality. The book draws upon a contrast between phenomenology and ontology to highlight distinct starting points of inquiries...
This book studies the Zohar as a work of literature. While the Zohar has long been recognized as a signal achievement of mystical theology, myth, and exegesis, this monograph presents a poetics of zoharic narrative, a morphology of mystical storytelling. Topics examined include mysticism and literature; fiction and pseudepigraphy; diaspora and exile; dramatic monologue and the representation of...