Western culture urgently needs to improve its cultural resources to help people make sense of ecstatic experiences. Evidence suggests that more and more people in western culture are having and seeking ecstatic experiences, because of the growing popularity of psychedelics and contemplative practices like meditation and yoga. However, we have scant cultural resources for making sense of such experiences.
Read MoreRick Archer emerged from a troubled youth to become a leading teacher of Transcendental Meditation. 12 years ago, he left TM and started Buddha At The Gas Pump, a podcast where he interviews spiritual teachers. It now has millions of views and downloads. I talked to Rick about how spirituality has changed since he first started meditating in 1968, and how he thinks New Age culture has fared during the COVID pandemic.
Read MoreThe most common criticism of spirituality is that its narcissistic, consumerist, selfish, apolitical and full of woo-woo magical thinking. That can be true, but not always. There’s one area where spirituality is much less individualistic, more politically active and more prone to evidence-based thinking than other faiths — and that’s regarding the environment.
Read MoreAt the end of the 19th century, the prospect of the death of God filled people with terror.
It would — we were told — lead to anarchy and despair.
Worried intellectuals assembled new religions — Marxism, Spiritualism, psychical research, Social Darwinism, western Buddhism — and scrambled onto them like life rafts as they awaited the deluge.
But 150 years on, it is extraordinary how absent ‘God’ is from people’s lives, and how little people notice.
Read MoreChristians 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.
Read MorePeople 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.
Read MoreWe’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?
Read MoreWe’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.
Read MoreHere's a conversation between me and David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom, about ecstatic experiences, spiritual pride and the trap of feeling special.
Read MoreAs 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’.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreWhile 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.
Read MoreLast 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).
Read MoreOn 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.
Read MoreMindfulness 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.
Read MoreI’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.
Read MoreSpiritual emergencies are moments of awakening and ego-dissolution which can be both ecstatic and deeply disturbing, even quasi-psychotic. With the right tools and support, we can navigate them to a richer and more meaningful life.
Read MoreI'm travelling in Mexico, researching the indigenous culture of magic mushrooms, or hongos as they are called here. Last weekend, I visited Huautla de Jimenez, a town eight hours drive from Mexico City, in the state of Oaxaca.
Read MoreHere is part 2 of my interview with pioneering researcher Milan Scheidegger, who works in the psychedelics lab at University of Zurich. You can read part 1 here. In this half of the interview, we discuss how to translate aspects of indigenous ayahuasca rituals - such as the shaman or sacred plant songs - into the context of western healthcare. We also discuss Milan's plans to establish a psychedelic healing clinic in Switzerland.
Read MoreMilan Scheidegger is one of the most interesting young researchers in psychedelics, because he integrates several different perspectives. He's a clinical psychiatrist at the University of Zurich, who's spent a decade studying the effect of psychedelics on subjects in a laboratory, and on a meditation retreat.
Read MorePsychosis. Scary word isn't it? These days we think nothing less of a person if they publicly disclose they get depression, or anxiety. We applaud them for being brave, although they're not really risking anything.
Read MoreI've come back from India after an interesting three weeks. I went there with the vague intention to find a guru and take my spiritual practice to the next level. I say 'vague' because I wasn't quite sure how one went about finding a guru.
Read MoreIt was when I took the escalator in Tottenham Court Road station that I realized quite how much Gay Pride has been embraced as a national festival. The entire tube station was festooned in rainbow colours, like a SuperMarioKart racetrack. Outside, a huge sign read Love is Love.
Read MoreI've spent the last two days at Breaking Convention, a conference on psychedelics at the University of Greenwich organized by some brave academics. It's my favourite academic conference, by a long stretch.
Read MoreI think a lot of emotional problems arise from the fact we're both subjects and objects.
Read More100 years ago, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim was worried. He had just finished his epic study of the function of religion, which was published in 1912 as The Elementary Forms of Religion.
Read MoreLast Sunday I finished a 10-day Vipassana retreat, at a monastery in Sweden. This was my third attempt to do a monastic retreat - I’d done a runner from both previous efforts, from a Rusian monastery in Lent 2006 (the head monk kept trying to convert me to Orthodox Christianity) and from a Benedictine monastery on the Isle of Wight in January 2013 (I was bored). This time, I vowed not to do a runner.
Read MoreOn Monday, a new free online course is starting, exploring the mental health benefits of literature (you can sign up here). It's made by the author Paula Byrne and her husband, literary academic Jonathan Bate, and features interviews with Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry, Melveyn Bragg and others, about how poetry has helped them through difficult times.
Read MoreIs there such a thing as 'individual genius' or is it a product of collective socio-cultural circumstances? This article explores two views, associated with David Bowie and Brian Eno.
Read MoreWe all know the story. Europe in the 17th century was torn apart by the Wars of Religion. Then, after several decades of extreme violence, people decided to put religious differences to one side, and to come together in the rational, secular, liberal, tolerant state.
Read MoreNicky Gumbel is one of the most successful evangelists of his generation. A former barrister, he's now the vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), an Anglican church in South Kensington where 4000 people come to worship each Sunday and which has helped to plant new churches around the country.
Read MoreLast weekend I went to Wilderness festival and gave a couple of talks. It was a magical festival - the musical acts weren’t that stunning, but there was lots of marvelous, weird, dreamy stuff happening that I wandered into, like a Mardi Gras parade and a mock fertility ritual with a man dressed as a penis and a woman dressed as a vagina. It was all very Dionysian.
Read MoreSir Anthony Seldon is the former headmaster of Wellington College, one of the first schools to introduce well-being classes into its curriculum. He's also a co-founder of Action for Happiness. In his new book, Beyond Happiness, he suggests we need to look beyond 'workaday happiness' to find something more non-rational and spiritual, which he calls joy or bliss. I interviewed him about this, as well as his thoughts on the 'politics of well-being' and his plans to create the first 'positive university'.
Read MoreThis week, I’ve been researching an ancient mnemonic technique called ‘the mind palace’, where people imprint a real or imagined building onto their memory - a palace, a mansion, a church, even a whole street - and then fill it with striking images, to which they attach bits of information they want to remember.
Read MoreIt’s that time of year again, when people all over Britain go off for the traditional New Year's Vipassana retreat. But not me - this year, I decided to keep it old school. I went on a Benedictine retreat.
Read MoreEarlier this week, my girlfriend and I toured around Yorkshire and Northumberland, once the stronghold of English medieval monasticism. We visited the beautiful ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, which once boasted the biggest church in England. As we wandered around the ruins, I wondered what we lost, when Henry VIII dissolved more than 1000 monasteries in five years.
Read MoreLast week, I went to an exhibition on Goya, in Boston. It was filled with his bizarre and fantastic dream-drawings, exploring the strange manias and nightmares that fill humans’ minds when their reason is switched off - as in the classic engraving, the Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.
Read MoreThis weekend, I was at a conference in Boston called the International Symposium on Contemplative Studies. I know - sounds pretty niche, maybe two monks, a chakra healer and a shaman with maracas? Well, it was enormous - 1600 people, 300 presentations, including ones by some of the leading psychologists in the world, and the Dalai Lama.
Read MoreA lot of modern technology, particularly social media, is a technology for selfing. This is why we're so addicted to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc (well, I am anyway). They're technologies for Selfing. Every post and tweet, we're making another little carving in the epic construction of our Public Self, then we wait to see how many likes we get.
Read MoreIn my review of Sam Harris’ Waking Up two weeks ago, I wrote this sentence: "Spiritual experiences tell us something about the cosmos,...the experience of infinite loving-consciousness is a glimpse of the very ground of being, also sometimes called God, Brahman, Allah, the Logos, the Tao, the Buddha-realm."
Read MoreI sent out a tweet last week asking to interview someone who'd found mindfulness useful for coping with depression. Mary got in touch and told me her story, which was fascinating. I thought I'd share it for this week's newsletter.
Read MoreI had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from 1995 until 2001. Seven years of fear, anxiety, depression and paranoia, which I feared would last forever. But I got better, thanks to a near-death experience.
Read MoreThis year I’ve developed and trialled an eight-part course in practical philosophy, called Philosophies for Life. The pilot was financed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via Queen Mary, University of London. I trialled the course with three partner organizations: Saracens rugby club; New College Lanarkshire and HMP Low Moss prison; and Manor Gardens mental health charity.
Read MoreThis week, I met Nataline Daycreator, a wonderful coach and author who works to help victims of spiritual abuse. She is herself a survivor of 14 years in an abusive Pentecostal community. She told me her story and the lessons we can draw from it.
Read MoreAs you know, I’ve been researching altered states of consciousness for the last year and a half, for my next book. As part of that, I started going to various churches around London, including a big charismatic-Anglican church in South Kensington called HTB.
Read MoreI write this from York, where yesterday I went to the ‘Story of Chocolate’ museum, and was shown around by a delightful and learned historian, Alex Hutchinson, who is the world expert on the Rowntree family and thus able to tell me some fascinating family gossip.
Read MoreApologies for the lack of newsletters recently - I’ve been in the depths of a project to design and teach a course based on Philosophy for Life. This month, I started teaching it in three organizations - a mental health charity in London called Manor Gardens; Saracens rugby club; and Low Moss prison in Glasgow (via New College Lanarkshire, which runs learning courses there).
Read MoreWhen I was six, my best friend Joe and I could give ourselves head-rushes by contemplating the size of the universe. We let our imaginations rise from the Earth, to the Solar System, to the Milky Way, and then stretched our imaginations as far as they would go to comprehend the universe. Then we’d wonder what was beyond that, and for a second we’d feel a sort of dizziness at the mystery in which we found ourselves.
Read MoreA few months back I was giving a philosophy workshop in a mental health charity. It was one of my less popular events - only one person turned up, a Romanian man who had recently moved to the UK and was finding it tough. We talked about Socratic philosophy, about the idea of engaging your inner voice in a rational dialogue, and the man (let’s call him Anghel) quietly told me that he heard voices.
Read MoreHow do you fit experiences of ecstasy, awe, wonder, the Sublime, or the Numinous into a materialist paradigm, without reducing or devaluing such experiences? With difficulty.
Read MoreI was up in east Scotland on New Year's Day, and found myself walking along a path called the John Muir Way. A few days later, a book I was reading mentioned a famous naturalist called John Muir, so I looked him up. It turns out John Muir was a father of modern conservationism, and the founder of many of California’s national parks. He is also a perfect specimen for my research into ecstatic experiences in nature.
Read MoreWell, that was a weird year. 2013 was the year I became a Christian, or rather 'committed my life to Christ' as Christians put it. What does that mean? How did I get here? Am I really a Christian or am I kidding myself? Let's re-wind and play the tape again.
Read MoreThis week I met a charming young man who had recently dropped out of university. He was writing an undergraduate dissertation on free will, read Sam Harris’ book on the subject, and came to the conclusion that free will does not exist, therefore there was no point finishing his dissertation. So his university gave him a ‘pass’ and he’s now wondering what to do next (not that he has any choice in the matter).
Read MoreWhen Dr Robin Carhart-Harris finished his masters in psychoanalysis in 2005, he decided he wanted to do a brain- imaging study of LSD to see if he could locate the ego and the unconscious. That might have seemed an impossible dream, considering he had no neuroscientific experience and there had been no scientific research into psychedelics in the UK for over three decades.
Read MoreLast weekend I had a glimpse of the future. I spoke at a New Age festival in Holland, a country where just 39% of people belong to a religion. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey released this week, that’s where we’re heading too. Thirty years ago, 68% of Brits said they belonged to a religion. Now it’s just 52%, of which less than half are Anglican. We are about to become a post-religious society. So what does that look like?
Read MoreWe all love a bit of ecstasy, don’t we? Not the drug (though that’s a form of ecstatic experience) but, more broadly, those moments of expansion, elation and awe we sometimes feel, when our heart-strings seem to vibrate in harmony with the universe, when the vast, black and empty cosmos seems suddenly to radiate with love. We’re all into that, yeah?
Read MoreSteven Pinker, the Harvard cognitive linguist, would not make a very good ambassador. In his latest diatribe, he attempts to reassure humanities scholars that science is not their enemy. Science is good, and humanities scholars should stop complaining about 'Scientism'. Unfortunately, he says this in such a tactless and, er, Scientistic way that it’s guaranteed to annoy not just humanities scholars, but no doubt many scientists too.
Read MoreAround a quarter of the world's two billion Christians now sign up to the Pentecostalist or neo-Pentecostalist belief that God talks to them. That includes some educated people like, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury. How is this possible, in an era of rising education and living standards? Is the world going mental? One social scientist who has looked into the question deeply is Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann, who brought out an excellent book last year called When God Talks Back.
Read MoreI’ve just re-read William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, which he gave as a series of lectures in 1902. It is a marvelous book, in which James attempts to take a pragmatic and empirical approach to religious experiences, remaining open to the question of where such experiences come from, and evaluating them by looking at their impact on people’s lives. In other words, he looks at the fruits, not the roots, of religious experience.
Read MoreImagine, if you will, the scene. The Enlightenment has defeated Religion, and its various champions meet to carve up the vanquished enemy’s territories. Philosophy takes the chair: ‘Right then, settle down everyone. Thank you. Now, let’s see...Religion used to offer ethics and laws.
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I woke up at 3am, for no particular reason, and lay in my bed listening to the city sleeping. My middle-class street in Tufnell Park was placid and at rest. Then I heard a woman sobbing, as she walked down the street.
Read MoreSimon Critchley, an English philosopher at the New School in New York, has suggested that all philosophy is an attempt to deal with two disappointments: religious disappointment, or the loss of faith; and political disappointment, or the search for justice. In his most recent book, Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology, he attempts to put these disappointments behind him, and work out a relationship between religion and politics.
Read MoreHow do you...fill your days?’ =My editor was looking at me with a hint of concern, in a cafe on Portland Street. She was worried I was losing my edge. It had been almost a year since my first book had come out, and still I hadn’t started working on another.
Read MoreDo you know any good poo and wee stories? This is the question that confronts me as I arrive at Windsor Hill Wood, an open-door community run by the writer Tobias Jones and his wife Francesca, in Somerset. They live there with their three children - Benedetta is eight, Grace is five, and Leo is three - and there are five beds for guests.
Read MoreThe eagle-eyed among you will have noticed there was no newsletter last weekend. Apologies. The reason for this is I have journeyed deep into the warm, pulsating heart of the happiness movement.
Read MoreHere are some quotes from my favourite living artist, David Lynch, about the creative process. They're from Chris Rodley's book, Lynch on Lynch:
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