Philosophy for Life | Blog | Philosophy | Wisdom | Spirituality

Skin hunger

COVID didn’t just exacerbate a pre-existing mental health crisis.

It massively exacerbated a pre-existing touch deficit.

Our liberal individualist society has put a great premium on the privatization of personal space. Don’t touch me. Hands off.

Our society gives us a lot of space and freedom to be ourselves, free from the encroachments of others. But it also creates loneliness and a touch deficit.

We’ve created a society where, in Britain, there are 8 million people living on their own.

The Body, DatingJules EvansMay 8, 2020Comment

The Earl of Shaftesbury and David Icke

Conspiracy theorist David Icke has been banned from YouTube and Facebook for peddling his usual nutty narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This has already backfired. He’s trending on Twitter, he’s in the international news, and the platform that first interviewed him — London Real — has raised $1 million to host a live interview with him on Daily Motion.

Politics, ConspiritualityJules EvansMay 3, 2020Comment

How to navigate a collective spiritual emergency

Homo sapiens is going through a collective spiritual emergency, a collective near-death experience. Executive authority is breaking down, established institutions and entrenched habits are dissolving, there is a loss of certainty and consensual reality; archetypal and apocalyptic thinking is flooding in from the margins of consciousness. For the first time ever, our collective species-consciousness is connected and focused on the same threat. We are walking together through the valley of death.

Altered states, Politics, Spiritual emergencyJules EvansApril 24, 2020Comment

Conspirituality - on the overlap between spirituality and conspiracy theories

I’ve noticed the overlap between New Age spirituality and conspiracy theories during the COVID19 crisis and wondered why it existed and what we can do about it.

Spirituality, Spiritual emergency, PoliticsJules EvansApril 19, 2020Comment

Learning to live with COVID

Epidemiologists and public health experts have tended to suggest that the way out of this pandemic labyrinth is to find a vaccine. But could that be just the beginning of another dispute?

Politics, UK politicsJules EvansMarch 15, 2020Comment

We can't handle what the internet has done to us

We’re in an entirely new level of interconnection, and we’re freaking out. Breathe.

Capitalism, Civilization and its D..., InternetJules EvansJanuary 1, 2020Comment

Michael Murphy on Esalen and the mystical expats

Michael Murphy co-founded Esalen, a cross between an adult education college, a research institute, and an ashram, in 1962. It’s had a huge influence on contemporary spirituality, and was the incubator for everything from ecstatic dance to Authentic Relating to holotropic breathwork. Here, Murphy tells me how he was inspired by his friends, Alan Watts, Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley, and how Esalen managed to keep going for 53 years, when so many spiritual experiments went very wrong very quickly.

Uncategorized, Aldous Huxley, Landmark Forum, mysticism, New Age, Perennial Philosophy, Quakers, Spiritual tourism, SpiritualityJules EvansDecember 4, 2019Comment

John and Alice Coltrane's ecstatic perennialism

In The Art of Losing Control, I wrote about spirituality as being like jazz improvisation. You inherit a set of standards from your culture, and from other cultures. And it helps if you really familiarize yourself with one particular tradition. But from there, you can improvise, you can bring different elements into contact with each other, you can find your song, your unique expression of Universal Consciousness.

Perennial Philosophy, Musical therapy, mysticismJules EvansNovember 28, 2019Comment

What psychedelic and Christian communities can learn from each other

Christians could learn an openness to the messy mystery of spiritual experience and the surprising people who can be chosen by God, while psychonauts could learn how to ground ecstatic experience in community and charitable service.

Aldous Huxley, Christianity, God, PsychedelicsJules EvansNovember 23, 2019Comment

'We've had a century of therapy and things are getting worse' - James Hillman's animist eco-psychology

In 1992 - almost 30 years ago - James Hillman laid down a stinging critique of therapy culture, arguing it was turning us inwards while the ecology was falling apart. He called for a more revolutionary psychology that challenges our model of the self and re-connects us to the soul of things.

climate change, JungJules EvansNovember 19, 2019Comment

Brexit and the global genetic arms race

For Brexit architect Dominic Cummings, the real prize of Brexit is to position the UK as a leader in a global genetics arms race.

Genetics, UK politicsJules EvansNovember 1, 2019Comment

The trauma-activism school of psychotherapy

There’s a revolutionary shift taking place in UK mental healthcare, from a biomedical to a trauma-informed approach. But every new model has its potential limits and flaws.

Psychiatry, PTSDJules EvansOctober 26, 2019Comment

Mark Ovland, Extinction Rebellion, and the limits of revolutionary mysticism

One of the figures in the controversial Tube protest by Extinction Rebellion is a Buddhist teacher who has embraced a new form of revolutionary Buddhism put forward by Rob Burbea. The blowback from the protest show the limits of this philosophy in practical terms.

Capitalism, climate changeJules EvansOctober 26, 2019Comment

Are we over-medicalizing suffering?

The old religions said life inevitably involves suffering. The new religion of health and well-being says ‘you should be happy and healthy. If you’re not, that’s a disorder. Here’s some CBT or some pills. Now you should be happy and healthy.’

Anti-depressants, Civilization and its D..., Psychiatry, PsychologyJules EvansOctober 26, 2019Comment

Eckhart Tolle, the Forrest Gump of spirituality

His simple, hopeful message - humanity is waking up and you are a part of this great evolution - made more sense in 1999. What does he have to say to 2019? I went to see him speak in London, to find out.

Consciousness, Enlightenment, Gurus, mysticism, New Age, Spirituality, Spiritual emergencyJules EvansOctober 4, 2019Comment

Want to boost your well-being? Don't go to university

Amid all the debate about the student mental health crisis, one idea is never put forward by the academic experts.

Don’t go to university.

It’s taboo to challenge the idea that a university degree is the right choice for everyone.

What if it isn’t?

Academia, Adult education, Wellbeing classesJules EvansSeptember 27, 2019Comment

We dream we are separate, lonely individuals. It's time to wake up.

In Oregon, there is a honey fungus that is four miles wide and possibly 8000 years old. It appears in our reality as small white mushrooms.

Altered states, Buddhism, Contemplation, Dreams, EnlightenmentJules EvansSeptember 14, 2019Comment

Dude, where's my paradigm shift?

People have been heralding the arrival of a new paradigm, in which consciousness is paramount, for over 140 years. So why hasn’t it arrived? I asked some leading thinkers in the world of transpersonal psychology.

Civilization and its D..., Consciousness, meditation, SpiritualityJules EvansAugust 15, 2019Comment

Emergency first-aid kit for difficult times

If you’re in one of those moments where it feels like gravity has increased and the universe is taking a dump on you, here are my three best techniques for getting yourself through difficult times.

Buddhism, Civilization and its D..., climate change, depressionJules EvansAugust 2, 2019Comment

A kestrel for a knave

Three friends emerged from a consultation with a celebrity Glasontonbury shaman with remarkably similar predictions for their future. Were their destinies bizarrely intertwined? I went to find out.

Altered states, Spiritual tourism, Spirituality, New Age, GurusJules EvansJuly 26, 2019Comment

Our best hope for multiculturalism? Tinder

Most social media technology has made us more polarised, despite the best intentions of their liberal employees. The exceptions are online dating apps. Despite the low motives of founders and users, they’ve accidentally led to a marked rise in inter-racial romances.

Sex, Dating, RacismJules EvansJuly 19, 2019Comment

The pathology of psychiatry

Nathan Filer’s excellent new book, The Heartland, humbly points out the flaws in psychiatry’s definition and treatment of schizophrenia. But it still shares psychiatry’s habitual contempt for spirituality.

Schizophrenia, Psychiatry, Wisdom, Spiritual emergencyJules EvansJuly 12, 2019Comment

Believing you're in a dream, or dead

A common feature both of psychedelic experiences and of spiritual emergencies is the sense that you’re in a dream, or dead. I had that experience myself, for several days after an ayahuasca retreat. We can learn to navigate these scary ego-death experiences using some basic techniques.

Spiritual emergencyJules EvansJuly 5, 2019Comment

A magic theatre of pain and purgation

This is an excerpt from my new Amazon Kindle Single - Holiday From the Self: An Accidental Ayahuasca Adventure. It’s about a nine-day ayahuasca retreat I attended in the Amazon in October 2017, and the strange two weeks that followed.

Altered statesJules EvansJune 29, 2019 Comment

A mountain of shit

Trauma begets trauma, and it builds up through the generations like a mountain of shit. Can we shovel it away…or use it as compost?

Anti-depressants, Anxiety, resilience, Psychiatry, PTSD, ReligionJules EvansJune 14, 2019 Comment

Should we have children?

Do we have the right to bring children into what could be a pretty unpleasant historical situation?

Civilization and its D..., climate changeJules EvansJune 7, 2019 Comment

The vale of ambiguity

We’re in the vale of ambiguity. Things are not clear in this dimension. That’s part of the agony and excitement. It’s like the early stage of a romance, when it’s not clear if it’s a serious relationship or not, or is it perhaps the relationship…or is it just a rush?

Buddhism, Dreams, meditation, mysticism, Mythology, Spiritual emergencyJules EvansMay 31, 2019 Comment

Epic fail?

The finale of Game of Thones has been attacked by a flock of angry nerds, while the Avengers climax left them in a warm post-coital glow. But here’s why the GOT finale is actually a lot more interesting for our times.

movies, climate changeJules EvansMay 22, 2019 Comment

How to be whole

Can education help us to become more well-rounded, integrated, wise and whole people? This was the project explored both by Aldous Huxley, and by his ancestors - Thomas Huxley and Matthew Arnold - in their famous dispute over the role of sciences and the humanities in education.

Rowan Williams: Mental health, mysticism and spirituality

Rowan Williams on the role that mysticism and spirituality can play in helping us confront the systematic unreality of our economic and cultural system.

Christianity, Capitalism, climate change, mysticism, Spirituality, CBTJules EvansMay 9, 2019 Comments

Ten defusion techniques for unhooking your mind

We’re constantly getting hooked by our thoughts, beliefs and feelings, getting lost in the drama. But luckily, there’s a host of defusion techniques we can use to defuse, from ACT, CBT, Stoicism, Buddhism and many other therapeutic traditions. Here are 10 of my favourite.

Buddhism, CBT, Contemplation, meditation, Psychology, self-help, StoicismJules EvansMay 3, 2019 Comments

Is Extinction Rebellion self-indulgent therapy?

You could accuse XR of being a form of therapy for the middle-classes. Like a cancer support group in the middle of Oxford Circus. But the cancer is not terminal yet. This is an alarm bell, a scream.

resilience, Civilization and its D..., climate changeJules EvansApril 26, 2019 Comments

Are anti-depressants an expensive form of faith healing?

The National Health Service in the UK released figures last month showing it gave out 71 million prescriptions for anti-depressants in England last year, which is double the figure from a decade ago. Seven million adults (14% of the adult population) are now on anti-depressants, as well as 300,000 children. Anti-depressants cost the NHS around £9 billion a year, which is a large chunk of its £125 billion annual budget.

Anti-depressantsJules EvansApril 7, 2019 Comment

Trans identity and moral panic: a reader responds

In response to my last post, ‘Is there a trans bubble?’, a trans queer person called Kate, who is a regular reader, got in touch to say that she disagreed with some of my points. Here’s Kate’s response, followed by some questions from me and answers from her.

UK politics, WisdomJules EvansApril 6, 2019Comment

The invention of the future

I met a futurist the other day. A traveller from a future land. We both gave keynotes at a conference on education. I sat next to him at dinner afterwards and asked him a bit about the futurism business, including what he charged for talks (I’m shameless). He shrugged. ’10, maybe 15’. ‘Pounds?’ ‘No…thousands’.

Aldous Huxley, Civilization and its D..., climate changeJules EvansMarch 28, 2019Comment

Is there a trans bubble?

A friend of mine told me recently that in a relative's class of 25 children, five of them are officially identified as trans. That means 20% of the children are on their way to hormone therapy and gender re-assignment.

Altered states, Civilization and its D...Jules EvansMarch 22, 2019 Comments

Aldous Huxley on why we need ecstatic dance

If you like this, come and hear me talk on Huxley's life and ideas, at the Bristol Psychedelic Society on April 3 (tickets here) or the London Psychedelic Society on April 16 (tickets here).

Aldous Huxley, Altered statesJules EvansMarch 21, 2019Comment

England and psychological inflexibility

This weekend gave us an extraordinary rugby story. Not Wales winning the Grand Slam – although well done to them – but what happened when England played Scotland.

CBTJules EvansMarch 18, 2019 Comments

Enough

The closest I’ve come to enlightenment was the two minutes when I was lying in a bloody heap on Valsfjell Mountain in Norway. This was back in February 2001. While skiing down a steep slope, I crashed through a fence, flew off a cliff, and landed with a thump, breaking my leg and several vertebrae.

The making and breaking of the counter culture

Last week I came across a small book called The Making of a Counter Culture, written in 1969 by an American historian called Theodore Roszak. I loved it. Roszak was the first to coin the phrase ‘the counterculture’.

The politics of transcendence and the war on drugs

Aldous Huxley thought western societies needed to become more open to ego-transcendence. We need to find ways to be less stuck in our egos, less stuck in consumerism and materialism, and more conscious, loving and open to other beings. We need to wake up to our potential and our power.

Aldous Huxley, Altered states, Anti-depressants, Consciousness, PsychedelicsJules EvansFebruary 22, 2019 Comments

It could be worse...

This is about quite a dark subject: the Soviet gulags. I don't recommend reading this essay if you suffer from clinical depression. If you're just somewhat got down by global politics, I do recommend you read this, to realize that things can be a lot worse, and to appreciate what we have going for us.

Extremist politics, Marxism, resilience, SpiritualityJules EvansFebruary 8, 2019 Comments

It's behind you!

A surprise visitor appears after a minute of this interview at Lowlands festival.

Comic reliefJules EvansFebruary 4, 2019Comment

The death (and rebirth) of the author

Times are tough for creative professionals.

A survey by the UK Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ACLS) found that the average income for a professional author is £10,500. It’s fallen by 42% since 2005.

Adult education, WorkJules EvansJanuary 25, 2019Comment

Ecstatic experiences and the trap of specialness

Here's a conversation between me and David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom, about ecstatic experiences, spiritual pride and the trap of feeling special.

Ecstasy, God, The Shadow, PsychedelicsJules EvansJanuary 21, 2019Comment

Culture war profiteering

Another bomb has gone off in the culture wars. Gillette, the razor manufacturer, has sparked outrage – OUTRAGE! – with its advert suggesting men can and should do better.

Extremist politics, MasculinityJules EvansJanuary 18, 2019 Comments

The Talented Mr Huxley

As you may know, I’m researching a book about Aldous Huxley and his friends Alan Watts, Christopher Isherwood and Gerald Heard, and how these four posh Brits moved to California and helped to invent the modern culture of ‘spiritual but not religious’.

The secret of success? Self-loathing

Last week, I watched Free Solo, a documentary about 33-year-old Alex Honnold’s attempt to free climb El Capitan in 2017. It’s a horror film. You watch squirming in your seat, as this likeable young man dangles by his fingertips 2,300 metres off the ground in Yosemite. Even the cameraman can’t watch.

self-helpJules EvansDecember 28, 2018 Comments

Love breaks out

I finally got around to watching Children of Men this week. It’s a 2006 film by Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, about a near-future where global civilization has collapsed, Britain has become a fortress against waves of mass migration, and human fertility has abruptly stopped. No child has been born for 20 years, the playgrounds are silent, and people’s hearts have hardened.

LoveJules EvansDecember 21, 2018 Comments

The era of magical thinking

Recently, I’ve noticed several friends and acquaintances – mainly millennials - getting into magick. A 30-year-old successful professional woman who pays to consult a globe-trotting voodoo-priestess about her love life. A 33-year-old musician who's left a humanist community and joined a coven. Stephen Reid, formerly a leader of UK Uncut, who then set up The Psychedelic Society and now runs magick rituals.

Internet, Magic, PsychedelicsJules EvansDecember 13, 2018 Comments

The student movement transforming the global economy

We’re so used to stories of snowflake students having meltdowns over Halloween costumes that it’s refreshing to remind ourselves they really can change the world for the better.

Business ethics, Capitalism, climate changeJules EvansDecember 8, 2018Comment

Rage against the dying of the light

I was walking to the Extinction Rebellion protest last weekend, and I suddenly started crying.

Managing your nervous system

Last week, I saw a good talk on somatic experiencing therapy. I’ve heard about it, and in some ways what I heard was quite obvious, but it was good to have it spelled out.

Spiritual technologies

Our psyches are deeply connected to the material and symbolic worlds we weave around us. The habitat of our daily lives re-inforces our habits, for good and ill. All our stuff – our apartments, our clothes, our books, our TV, our online activity, our food, our relationships – helps make us who we are, in a powerful feedback loop.

Art, Spirituality, Transhumanism, well-being technologyJules EvansNovember 2, 2018 Comments

How alt-right is Nietzsche really?

I wasn’t a big reader as a youth. I was more of a jock and a class clown. It was only around the age of 17 that I suddenly became a moody adolescent book-worm – it was both a quickening and a sickening. In one term, I read Hamlet, King Lear, Heart of Darkness and Freud’s Five Cases of Hysteria, and also watched Blue Velvet.

Ecstasy, Extremist politics, God, happiness, Perennial PhilosophyJules EvansOctober 18, 2018Comment

The future of work and the future of education

Roy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, a venture fund backed by Bloomberg. He also works on the future of work, and - like a lot of people in Silicon Valley - is a vocal supporter of Universal Basic Income (UBI). I met up with him in San Francisco to talk about the future of work and the importance of lifelong learning.

Adult education, Transhumanism, Wellbeing classes, WorkJules EvansOctober 12, 2018Comment

Perennialism and fascism

While I was in San Francisco, I got the chance to meet Michael Murphy, one of the founders of the Esalen Institute. It's a cross between a spiritual retreat centre and an adult education college, perched on the cliffs of Big Sur next to some hot springs. It's been very influential on transpersonal psychology and American spirituality.

What universities can learn from Aldous Huxley

On Monday, I’m teaching undergraduates for the first time at my university, Queen Mary University of London. It’s launching a ten-lecture course on health and well-being, and I’m doing two of them – one on the philosophies of well-being, another on ego-transcendence.

Education policy, happiness, Wellbeing classes, WisdomJules EvansSeptember 29, 2018Comment

'This is just a test'

Apologies for the delay in writing. I’ve been in California for the last three weeks, immersed in preparing for Burning Man, then going to Burning Man, then recovering from Burning Man.

The Quakers on how to balance inner and outer work

Last week I visited Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat centre outside Philadelphia, nestled between the gorgeous Quaker liberal arts colleges of Haverford and Swarthmore. I made a sort of mini-pilgrimage there as part of my research into the ‘mystical expats’ – Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and Alan Watts, four English writers who moved to California in the 1930s and helped invent the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ demographic (which is now 25% of the US population).

To philosophize is to learn how to die

Last weekend I went to a seminar on dying at the Garrison Institute. That might seem a rather Gothic weekend, but I don’t think it’s that weird. Socrates said: 'To philosophize is to learn how to die.'

Buddhism, Contemplation, DeathJules EvansAugust 12, 2018 Comments

The shaman's apprentice

These days everyone is a goddam shaman. But what if you wanted to really train as an Amazon maestro or maestra? What is that process like? Is it terrifying, magical, bonkers? Never mind Carlos Castaneda and his fictional 'Don Juan'.

Spirituality, The Shadow, Uncategorized, Wisdom, PsychedelicsJules EvansAugust 3, 2018 Comments

The Philosopher and the Magus

Last week, if you remember, I was at a Buddhist seminar in the Colorado mountains, taught by a Tibetan Buddhist lama called Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. This was quite different to other Buddhist retreats I’ve been on. There wasn’t much meditation, instead there was four hours of teaching every day, over nine days.

Pema Chodron on staying open when things fall apart

I’ve come to Boulder in Colorado, to hear a talk by the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron. As I’ve previously written, I picked up Chodron’s book, The Places That Scare You, while on an ayahuasca retreat, in between two rather scary ceremonies.

Buddhism, GurusJules EvansJuly 19, 2018 Comments

Pema Chodron's Places That Scare You

Pema Chodron's book, The Places that Scary You, has been extremely helpful to me over the past six months. I came across the book in the Amazon jungle, when I was on an ayahuasca retreat last October.

Buddhism, WisdomJules EvansJuly 19, 2018 Comment

Re-finding Your Joy

On a recent retreat I met Joe, an artist in his mid-20s. Joe reminded me of an Elizabethan artist – it might have been his goatee, or his air of punchy independence mixed with free-wheeling romance.

Buddhism, meditationJules EvansJuly 13, 2018Comment

Joe's story

This is an article by Joe, a young artist who I met at a London Buddhist Centre retreat last month, and whose story I drew on for my latest blog-post, Re-finding Your Joy. He told me his story on the retreat and I asked if I could interview him.

Contemplation, Masculinity, UncategorizedJules EvansJuly 13, 2018 Comment

Project Me

Mindfulness has become such an unobtrusive part of our cultural landscape that we can forget how radical and counter-cultural Buddhism really is. It’s become subsumed into the well-being movement: if we take five minutes to close our eyes, breathe slowly and relax, then we can live our normal lives on a slightly happier and more even keel. That’s the promise of mindfulness.

Buddhism, meditationJules EvansJuly 6, 2018 Comments

The Princess and the Pea

I’m back from a 10-day meditation retreat, at Vajrasana in sunny Suffolk. That might seem a bit of a doss, but it’s also an investment – I really want to improve my meditation practice, for my benefit and others', and it’s ten times easier to learn on retreat than at home. It’s like trying to light a match indoors versus trying to light it on the top of a windy hill.

Buddhism, Christianity, meditationJules EvansJune 28, 2018 Comments

Kanye West and the five elements of creative genius

I went to see a publisher the other day, who said they had a project for me. The project turned out to be a series called ‘Great Philosophers’. Could I suggest any great living philosophers to write about, other than myself obviously? ‘How about a book about Kanye West?’ They laughed. Pause. ‘No, really. Make a series of little books about great cultural influencers. I’ll do one on Kanye West.’

Musical therapy, UncategorizedJules EvansJune 14, 2018 Comments

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