Being passionate and enthusiastic about psychedelics – or even evangelical about them – can sometimes lead to seeing their influence everywhere. When you spend a lot of time thinking about these substances, as well as using them, it’s as if the world becomes more psychedelic; nature becomes more alive, and you imagine how things would…
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Because of the influence of ‘set and setting’, not everyone’s psychedelic experience is the same. Various aspects of ‘set’ (e.g. beliefs, expectations, mood, personality, intention, level of restfulness) and ‘setting’ (e.g. culture, environment, music, people present) interact with the drug and the dose to produce a particular kind of experience. This includes the visual qualities…
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The ebb and flow of ocean waves has a naturally soothing quality to it. We all experience it; we all appreciate it. But why do ocean sounds relax us and calm the mind? One speculative hypothesis is that these sounds remind us of life in the womb. According to this hypothesis, the sound of waves,…
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In spiritual circles, a common metaphysical belief is that ‘the universe is love’, or something to that effect. Another way of phrasing this view is that the fundamental force in the universe is love, the universe is governed by love, or, as the Jesuit mystic Teilhard de Chardin opined, “The physical structure of the universe…
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Consciousness alteration is natural and universal among humans. We have been altering our mental states, through the use of exogenous chemicals, for millennia. As the philosopher David Blacker observes in his latest book Deeper Learning with Psychedelics (2024), “We seem to be creatures for whom unadulterated reality has never been quite fully sufficient.” We are…
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