Abstract Sentience, as the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, is often understood as a property of an organism, and the main problem is to determine whether an organism possesses this property or not. This is not just an armchair worry. Sentient ethics grounds its normative prescriptions on sentience, so assessing if an organism possesses sentience is crucial for ethical reasoning and...
Following the previous homage to Charles T. Tart and considering that Stan Krippner has celebrated more than 90 birthdays, this issue commemorates Stan along with two consciousness trailblazers who collaborated with him while they were alive: Jeanne Achterberg and Ruth-Inge Heinze. Jeanne was a very influential pioneer in mind/body medicine, particularly imagery in healing. Ruth-Inge Heinze had...
Mental wellness has emerged as one of the most critical components of public health and human development in the twenty-first century. As global societies confront rising levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and psychological fragmentation, there is a growing interest in integrative frameworks that explore the role of subtle influences on mental states. Microvita, a concept introduced by the...
Positive changes or transformations have been the subject of study within spiritual traditions as well as humanistic and transpersonal psychology. The aim of the current study is to understand the process of transformation among Moslems in Indonesia, who follow spiritual practices, to achieve the nafs al-muṭma ínnah [tranquil self]. Ten participants in Yogyakarta province were involved in this...
Background: Systemic diversification of psychedelic research is needed, in light of interest in psychedelics for healing among Black, Indigenous, and Peoples of Color (BIPOC) and queer communities. Doing so also contributes to an inclusive evidence base, ethically meeting the anticipated demand for psychedelic treatments post-approval. Aims: Here, a primer for culturally attuned psychedelic...
This article presents a methodological proposal within the field of cognitive sciences, grounded in the appropriation of approaches and research tools from anthropology. This approach, termed ethnofenomenological praxis, aims to enable an epistemological and ontological openness in cognitive scientists through the integration of elements taken from cognitive anthropology, ethnobotany, and...
Abstract: In the contemporary landscape about temporal experience, debates concerning the “hard question” of the experience of the flow—as opposed to debates concerning more qualitative aspects of temporality, such as change, movement, succession and duration—are gaining more and more attention. The overall dialectics can be thought of in terms of a debate between the realists (who take the...
This essay discusses the potential clinical use of 3,4methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) with patients diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We present a brief history of the use of consciousness-altering substances from ancient times to the present as well as recent research on psychedelic assisted psychotherapy (PAP). Double blind investigation in which some of the...
In this article, I explore the aesthetic interconnectedness between Katherine Dunham’s ‘Shango’ and Haitian Vodou spirit possession (a sublime embodiment). I assert that Dunham’s ‘Shango’ catalyses an aesthetic of Black Dance Performance through the enactment of spirit possession as an aesthetic value within the choreography and Black Dance Performance largely. I employ an intertextual,...
In our interdisciplinary research tandem of dance studies and psychoanalysis, we explore our ‘access to the world’ by seeking out, shaping, questioning experiential practices and the reading of bodies in these cultural spaces. By integrating conceptual perspectives from psychoanalysis and dance studies as culture theories, we analyse secular spirituality, cultures of consciousness and their...