With an extreme range of terms for psychedelic drugsfrom "schizotoxic" to "entheogenic" -"psychedelic," nonetheless remains the most salient one.These substances manifest or disclose aspects of the mind of those who take them as well as the mind of those who study them.Proponents for the innumerable terms for these drugs are all able to adduce supportive evidence.Necessarily, this evidence is a...
May 8, 2018Nigel Hamilton, Aaron Balick, Alexandra Chalfont et al.
In David&s;s initiation dream, he has a glimpse into the awakening ahead and finds that: "lights and colours of every hue are all manifest in this vast heavenly space". Darkness is acting as a veil protecting us from premature exposure to the hidden, psychic forces of our inner world. Mystical experiences of colour and light have in common the sense of attention and consciousness being totally...
Sigmund Freud conceived of psychoanalytic practice as different from that of priests and pastoral or educational counsellors. The deadly aspect of mystical experience destroys identity in the sense that it destroys the illusory or imaginary notion of ego. Zen practice is commonly referred to as leading to an ego-death. Psychoanalysis, and Lacanian psychoanalysis in particular, contains a very...
El presente artículo es un análisis fenomenológico de la Subida del Monte Carmelo, cuyo propósito es mostrar que la Noche Oscura es una misteriofanía negativa que acoge tres sentidos. En primer lugar, San Juan de la Cruz llama Noche Oscura a la negación de los apetitos relativos a las potencias. En segundo lugar, la fe es Noche Oscura para el hombre, porque la donación de lo divino causa...
The Buddha claimed to have ‘woken up’, describing a way to end suffering by seeing all phenomena as impermanent and letting go of desire and the illusory self. Many others have described awakening, but do they all undergo the same changes in self and consciousness? Buddhism has interacted more closely with science and psychotherapy than other religions, perhaps because of its relative lack of...
Introspection is essential to the study of subjective experience but is problematic. Some call for a special ‘first-person science’ of consciousness based on irreducible subjective facts; others claim that ‘first-person methods’ such as introspection, meditation, or other personal explorations and training are valid, but science is a collective enterprise and a science of consciousness is no...
3,4-methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) is a potent pyrovalerone cathinone that is substituted for amphetamines by recreational users. We report a comprehensive and detailed description of the effects of subcutaneous MDPV (1-4 mg/kg) on pharmacokinetics, biodistribution and metabolism, acute effects on thermoregulation under isolated and aggregated conditions, locomotion (open field) and sensory...
This chapter studies a major debate that has emerged in the second-half of the twentieth century between scholars of mysticism. The debate is between perennialist scholars and constructivist scholars. Perennialism sees mystical experiences as transcending culture, language, and time-period, and pointing to a unified spiritual experience among various peoples, while constructivism sees mystical...
Cognitive sciences like neuroscience have been used to study more common, cultivated, or induced religious experiences like states of meditation or prayer; however, in Medjugorje, it is the first time that spontaneous and extraordinary mystical experiences, such as visionary experiences in the form of Marian apparitions, have been studied by neuroscience as they are transpiring: pointing to...
In June 1981, six young Croatians in the village of Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia, reported that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them. The Medjugorje visionaries say that the Virgin Mary has returned every day since then, bringing them important messages from heaven to convey to the world. Throughout history, people have reported encountering extraordinary religious...