Ayahuasca is an original Amazonian brew made from the vines and leaves of Psychotroa viridis and Banisteriopsis caapi. Both P. viridis and B. caapi give this brew its unique psychedelic properties which have been revered over centuries. In recent years, ayahuasca has gained attention as a potential therapeutic tool for mental health disorders, including substance abuse and depression. The...
The Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ-30) and Challenging Effects Questionnaire (CEQ) are two of the most widely used, validated instruments to probe subjective effects of psychedelic drugs. However, these assessments are lengthy and can be a burden to study participants or patients if administered during acute psychedelic effects, after resolution of psychedelic effects when participants...
The idea of "Insān Kāmil" and defining its characteristics and explaining its examples is one of the long-term categories in Islamic mysticism. This idea has been proposed in the mystical system of Ayn al-Quzat and Ibn Arabi, to belong to two different traditions, with common and sometimes distinct characteristics. The present study aims to explain the common and different aspects of the...
In this paper, we seek to evaluate the presentation of Sufism in Attar's “The Conference of the Birds”, a Poem translated into the English by Peter Avery, in the Islamic literature. The investigation in its turn is directed on the modern writings to expose how the authors derive from the Sufi traditions the themes, the symbols, and acts to allegorize the many mystical experiences and spiritual...
This article examines the earthly journey of the saints in early Jewish and Daoist hagiographies. The major texts for comparative reading are Sefer Shivchei Ha-Ar”i and Shenxian Zhuan, namely, the foundation stones of each hagiographical tradition. Emphasis is laid on the most significant phases in the process of making saints while the candidates dwell in the worldly domain as quasi-divine...
Richard Rohr says that ‘John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila were part of the “final supernova” of non-dual, mystical consciousness in the 16th century, before it all but disappeared for five hundred years in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the enlightenment, and the invention of the printing press’. 1 So let us hope that this book is one of the signs that this ‘final supernova’ is...
In the debate between Freud and Romain Rolland the latter asserted the infants’ oceanic feeling to be saner than the adults’ limited sense of self, and that mystics recover the oceanic feeling without losing the learning achieved during socialization. Freud retorted that the oceanic feeling involved a sense of shelterlessness, and whoever went through derealization was psychotic and needed to...
Psychedelics are remarkable, versatile substances that produce a wide range of effects and can cause both harm and healing. Clinical research into psychedelic treatments is booming. In spite of this renewed interest, relatively little is known about how patients experience these treatments. In this dissertation, patients who received a psychedelic (either ketamine or psilocybin) to a treat...
. Introduction Comparative literature is a new branch in literary research, which has an unbreakable bond with topics like literary criticism, textual criticism, and investigation of the purpose of speech in the prominent works of different nations. This phenomenon was put forth almost two centuries ago in France which was then followed by Germany, Japan, and the United States of America. This...
There has been renewed interest in the use of 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA) and serotonergic psychedelics in the treatment of multiple psychiatric disorders. Many of these compounds are known to produce prosocial effects, but how these effects relate to therapeutic efficacy and the extent to which prosocial effects are unique to a particular drug class is unknown. In this article,...