The very presence of hallucinations raises puzzling and fascinating questions about reality … However, my real questioning did not fully occur until the voices started, which was once again a gradual process … When the voices occurred, I perceived them as omnipotent and omniscient … To me, auditory-verbal hallucinations are the result of thought processes of which I am unaware. Humpston 2014...
The shift from negative evaluations of hypo-egoicism to more positive considerations is a shared interest of both the positive psychologist and the psychologist of religion. This chapter suggests that the possible positive benefits of hypo-egoicism associated with experiences of transcendence may be interpreted as vertical (more common in psychology of religion) or horizontal (more common in...
This chapter examines the cognitive, motivational, emotional, and interpersonal characteristics that distinguish hypo-egoic from egoic individuals and speculates about the origins of these differences. Cognitively, hypo-egoic people tend to be more focused on stimuli in the present moment, which they process in an experiential fashion with minimal internal commentary. They also tend to be less...
Presented at a conference titled “Psychedelic Science 2013,” highlighting the resumption of investigations with psychedelic substances (i.e., psilocybin, DMT, LSD, MMDA, etc.) in the United States and Europe after a dormant period of more than two decades, the author presents insights and perspectives gleaned from his 25 years of clinical research experience. After acknowledging the vastness...
This research tests the hypothesis that group practice of the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) and TM-Sidhi® program by a group of sufficient size is associated with reduced rates of homicide and violent crime. Data from a prospective quasi-experiment were analyzed using intervention analysis or interrupted time series analysis. Dependent variables are time series of the U.S. monthly homicide...
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 50(11) A recent review in Pharmacological Reviews highlights that over the last decade, a renaissance has occurred in psychedelic drug research in North America and Europe as investigators at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), New York University and Imperial College London have embarked on studies that...
Resumo: O artigo comenta globalmente algumas anotações da Vorlesung não proferida – “Os Fundamentos Filosóficos da Mística Medieval” (1918-1919) – na tentativa ainda fragmentária de esboçar uma compreensão fenomenológica da experiência mística. Assim, destaco, primeiramente, as duas observações iniciais de Heidegger sobre o sentido ambíguo da formulação “fundamentos filosóficos da mística...
Throughout the twentieth century different hermeneutics of nega- tivity helped reflect on the spiritual debts to negative theology, and in par- ticular to the major mystical trends of Medieval Europe. The technical term "Apophatic (or negative) Aesthetics" is proposed to define the work of some twentieth-century artists, who are considered the heirs of these traditions. In this article, a...
In the present study we explored the psychometric properties of three widely used questionnaires to assess the subjective effects of hallucinogens: the Hallucinogen Rating Scale (HRS), the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ), and the Addiction Research Center Inventory (ARCI). These three questionnaires were administered to a sample of 158 subjects (100 men) after taking ayahuasca, a...
Abstract The contemporary academic study of religion has its roots in conceptual and theoretical structures developed in the early to mid-20th century. A particularly important example of such a structure is the concept of the “numinous” developed by the theologian and comparativist Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) in his work, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of...