The psychologist Timothy Leary was (and still is) a controversial countercultural figure. He can be credited with introducing many young people to LSD and mind expansion, which spelled good news to some and bad news to others. When you open your mind, you may not always like what falls in. Leary became an evangelist for…
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One of the most popular blog posts on my site is my essay on DMT jesters and tricksters (a modified version of it became one of the essays in my book, which includes a new section about my personal experiences). Several people commented on my blog post to say they have also encountered jester entities.…
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The Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung is well known for developing his concept of the archetype. This refers to a primordial pattern existing in the collective unconscious, or humanity’s shared, inherited mental contents, which we are unaware of. Jung previously conceptualised archetypes (e.g. the Mother, the Trickster, the Shadow, the Child) as purely mental phenomena…
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One common view in the philosophy of self sees the notion of a discrete, concrete self as an illusion. This concept is known as anatta (not-self) in Buddhism, and it was later defended by the Scottish philosopher David Hume (although he didn’t explicitly draw on Buddhism when making his arguments against the reality of self).…
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There are many ways to define and conceptualise psychedelics. For example, these chemicals may be referred to as plant medicines or entheogens, based on their ability to generate healing or spiritual experiences, respectively. The Aztecs called Psilocybe mexicana (a species of psychedelic mushroom) teonanácatl, which in the Aztec Nahuatl language means ‘divine mushroom’ or ‘flesh…
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