Last 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 MoreCure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body, is an excellent new book by science journalist Jo Marchant, which explores the healing (and harming) power of the mind and emotions over the body. It succintly brings together a lot of recent evidence in areas sometimes dismissed as 'pseudoscience', such as the placebo response and hypnotherapy, to argue for their medical efficacy and the need for a medical model which better incoporates the mind.
Read MoreI'm interested in the idea of religion and the arts as forms of collective improvisation - play-areas where people can let go of their normal ego-construction and social situation, and play at other selves and other worlds.
Read MoreOne evening in the winter of 1969, the author Philip Pullman had a transcendent experience on the Charing Cross Road.
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 MoreWhen I was 20, I had a series of nightmares. In the first nightmare, I was in a car with some friends heading to a music festival. We heard on the radio that a lunatic had escaped from a local asylum. The traffic started to slow on the motorway, and we realised this was because people were leaving their cars and running away in terror. The whole motorway was deadlocked with abandoned cars.
Read MoreOver 500 people filled in my survey about their dreams. The results suggest people have 'big dreams' which they find insightful and adaptive, but such dreams are rare, and usually in times of crisis. Big dreams sometimes involve a visit from a deceased loved one.
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 MoreI was driving along a motorway at roughly 70 mph when I realised suddenly that I was not in control. I’d gone somewhere else, and spent the last five minutes or so thinking about my book in some virtual study in my mind. And yet, despite the car being unmanned as it hurtled down the A40, it did not crash.
Read MoreAs the great general and military strategist Carl von Clausewitz noted in his 1832 book On War, war ‘necessarily involves the feelings’. War is waged as much in our emotions as it is on the battlefield. Each side tries to maintain their own emotional resolve and self-command, while at the same time using violence, shock, and unremitting pressure to ‘wear down’ the enemy’s emotional resources until their will is broken and they submit.
Read MoreImagine if we spent as much time and effort on our spiritual lives as on our careers. Or let's put it another way. Imagine if we spent as much time and effort on our careers as on our spiritual lives. As in, roughly ten minutes a day, maximum, or maybe one hour a week if you're exceptionally hard-working.
Read MoreThe modern Stoic movement, which brings together atheists and theists, is one example of a new friendship and alliance between people for whom metaphysical disagreements are less important than friendship and spiritual practice. The New Atheism wars are over, and a new messy spirituality has emerged.
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 MoreIf you're trying to carve out a better career and life for yourself, you face obstacles. Some of those obstacles are external - finding the right job opportunity, testing your idea, choosing your partners and investors, balancing the books.
Read MoreYesterday evening I went to a demonstration at the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain. This was the first time I've been to such an occasion - I'm not really into psychics, seances, ouija, Tarot, all that jazz. But I've been reading the work of a pioneering late Victorian psychologist, Frederic Myers, and he was very into all of that. I'll write more about him later this week.
Read MoreIn the early years of psychology, there was no hotter topic than multiple selves and their existence in the subconscious. Pioneering psychologists like Jean-Marie Charcot, William James, Frederic Myers, Theodore Flournoy, Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud were all fascinated by how other selves could exist within the same personality, and come out in moments of trance or subliminal consciousness.
Read MoreProfessor Bernard McGinn of the University of Chicago is the leading historian of Christian mysticism. He's written five of a projected seven volumes of his history of mysticism, called The Presence of God, which have traced the evolution of Christian mysticism from Jesus to the 1550s.
Read MorePhilosophy is a story told mainly by male intellectuals, nerds, thoughtful sedentry types. The hero of that story is the intellect, and the villain of that story is often the body, just as you’d expect. If accountants told the story of the human race, the hero of the story would be accountancy.
Read MoreProbably the worst idea in the history of religion is the End Times. It’s caused more bloodshed than any other religious belief. It’s still around, costing lives - the ideology of ISIS is soaked in apocalyptic expectation, as a new book by William McCants explores. It’s amazing that the big religions have survived so long, considering how often their followers' totally certain prediction of the End Times turned out to be totally wrong.
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 MoreThis Wednesday, at 9pm, a rare event is taking place: the BBC is showing a TV programme about philosophy. Yes, a philosophy TV programme! Rarer than a blue moon or a Scottish Labour MP. Classicist Bettany Hughes (that's her on the left) presents a three-part show on BBC 4 called Genius of the Ancient World.
Read MoreCult is sacred, secret and always the same. Culture is public, irreverent, and strives for originality and innovation. Yet the two are intimately connected. Culture feeds on cult, and cult feeds off culture. Our society today lacks a cult, and as a result our culture wearies itself in empty innovation.
Read MoreHow are you feeling? How well are you? Is your weight where you want it to be? Smoking too much? How happy are you on a scale of one to ten? Are you optimising your personal brand? How fast was your last five kilometre run? Would you like to share that via social media? Would you like a life-coach to help you overcome these challenges on a way to a better, happier, more awesome you?
Read MoreI’ve been reading Pierre Hadot’s book on Plotinus. It’s marvellous - only 100 pages long, yet so much wisdom and poetry in it. My favourite passage in it is when Hadot talks about the ‘levels of the self’.
Read MoreI spent the last few days at a weird and wonderful conference. It was called Breaking Convention 2015, the third conference on ‘psychedelic consciousness, culture and clinical research’ at the University of Greenwich.
Read MoreWatch out folks. There is a murky world lurking behind the scenes, a sinister cabal of policy-makers, psychologists, CEOs, advertizers and life-coaches, watching you, measuring you, nudging you, monitoring your every smile, all to try and make you happy. We must resist. This, broadly, is the message of sociologist William Davies’ book, The Happiness Industry: How Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being.
Read MoreHere's a 15-minute podcast I made about non-verbal ecstasy in rock & roll, with clips from some of my favourite ecstatic performers - Little Richard, James Brown, The Beatles, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen and others. It's part of my research into ecstasy in modern culture. Enjoy!
Read MoreThe documentary maker Adam Curtis wrote in 2010: ‘In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.’
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 MoreI have a friend called Rob, who suffers from what is today called paranoid schizophrenia. He was diagnosed when he was 17 or so, after a psychotic breakdown on LSD. He and I had first taken LSD together when we were 15, and it messed us both up - I had social anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder for several years. But that’s nothing to what Rob has had to bear.
Read MoreI'm researching the history of ecstasy and ecstatic experiences in modern western culture, how spiritual ecstasy got pathologised from the Enlightenment to the present day, and how people found new ways to get out of their heads.
Read MoreAs most of you know, I'm working on a book about the place of ecstatic experiences and altered states of consciousness in post-religious / secular / rationalist society.
Read MoreJohn-Henry Carter is the most successful captain of Oxford rugby team ever, the only captain to lead the team to three successive victories in the Varsity match. The former flanker attributes that success not to his speed or his 6ft 3 frame, but to his training in psychodynamic therapy and existentialist philosophy.
Read MoreOne of the things I want to argue in my next book is that ecstatic experiences have been pathologised in the secular west, to our detriment. People still experience ecstasy - by which I mean moments where we go beyond the self and feel connected to something bigger than us, usually a spirit but also sometimes another individual or group - but we lack the framework to make sense of such experiences.
Read MoreI've spent a pleasant couple of days reading Carl Jung, looking particularly at his ideas on the shadow and how symbols can act as mediators between the unconscious and conscious.
Read MoreI gave up booze for Lent. This is long overdue - I have had a drink, usually more than one, pretty much every day for the last 20 years. Stoicism and booze helped me through PTSD and social anxiety. My stiff upper lip was soaked in beer. Twas ever thus - why do you think Edwardians called cocktails ‘stiffeners’?
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 MoreI’ve been working on a book provisionally entitled Modern Ecstasy for the last two years. I’m half-way through, and having a mid-season wobble. Turns out it’s difficult to write about transcendence. Who knew!
Read MoreI'm interested in companies and organizations that have a higher purpose than profit. Here's an example - indie publisher Galley Beggar Press, set up in 2012 by Eloise Millar and her partner Sam Jordison, with bookseller Henry Layte who moved onto other projects in 2013. For a little company, Galley Beggar punches way above its weight - in the last twelve months, it published Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, which won the Bailey's prize for women's fiction, and Francis Plug's How To Be A Public Author, which was a big commercial hit.
Read MoreThe 'politics of well-being' has a credibility issue with politicians and the general public, partly because of how research is communicated. In brief, there is too much leaping for joy.
Read MoreFollowing on from my earlier post on 'the varieties of transcendent experience', I remain interested in the role of transcendent experiences, or the yearning for the transcendent, among humanists. Someone who is definitely exploring in this area is Sanderson Jones, one of the founders of the Sunday Assembly, which is a booming humanist congregation.
Read MoreI love the sociologist Peter L. Berger. For 50 years, he's been producing intelligent, rigorous and sympathetic work on the sociology of religion. I just got a copy of his 1970 little book, A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, in which he talks about what he calls 'signals of transcendence' in modern society - little flashes of light which seem to point to a transcendent reality.
Read MoreIn his magnum opus, The Secular Age, the philosopher Charles Taylor charts western society’s unprecedented shift from a consensus belief in transcendent reality to a worldview that is much more immanent or ‘this-world’.
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 MoreWisdom is a watering-hole at which animals of many different species can come and drink - as long as they don’t insist on trying to convert, denounce or attack each other, but instead meet in friendship and good humour.
Read MoreAt the end of Philosophy for Life, I asked what the Socratic-Stoic tradition of philosophy misses out, and suggested there is an alternate approach to life and to emotional healing, which I called the Dionysiac tradition:
Read MorePeter Vardy is a theologian and perhaps the leading Religious Studies teacher in the country. After teaching theology at Heythrop College and writing several best-selling books on ethics and religious philosophy, he and his wife Charlotte - also a theologian - set up Candle Conferences, which runs huge events for RS students around the country.
Read MoreAt the beginning of Philosophy for Life, I talk about Raphael's famous mural of the School of Athens, and imagine getting a free ticket to study there. Well, this week, I got to join the school! The Idler Academy arranged a photo shoot on the steps of St Paul's, with various British thinkers and philosophers.
Read MoreIt is quite easy to make noise in our culture. The internet and online media are like a giant echo chamber, and within a few days one angry tweet can turn into an ear-splitting feedback scream of indignation. Because of that, we can become entirely focused on making noise in our culture - getting retweeted, getting on the news, getting publicity somehow or other.
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 MoreIt’s Monday evening, I’m tired after a boozy weekend, it’s dark, cold, and pouring with rain. I do not feel like dancing ecstatically. And yet that is precisely where I am headed: to an ecstatic dance session in a town hall in Islington (where else).
Read MoreThere are lots of reasons to be anxious at the moment: the recession, ISIS, ebola, the rise of far right parties across Europe. But there's one big reason to be cheerful, and to be proud of UK public policy: mental health.
Read MoreI was obsessed with Twin Peaks when it was first shown in 1990. We all were. Every Sunday after lunch at boarding school, we piled in to the TV room, pushed in the VHS cassette of that week’s episode, waited for the first note of Angelo Badalamenti’s tremolo guitar to sound next to the opening shot of the wren, and that was it, we were in heaven.
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 MoreProfessor Nancy Sherman has worked with the US military for over 20 years, and has written several books on military ethics, including Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind; and The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds and Souls of Our Soldiers.
Read MoreSam Harris, the second-most-famous atheist in the world, is an unusual sort of atheist. On the one hand, he’s a neuroscientist who reveres the scientific method and despises the superstitious dogma of religion - so far, so normal.
Read MoreThis week, I read Abraham Maslow’s 1964 little book, Religions, Values and Peak-Experiences. It’s only 100 pages long, but something of a classic, and anticipates the contemporary interest in the science of spiritual experience that’s apparent in, for example, Sam Harris’ new book (which I will review shortly).
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 broke up with my therapist yesterday. Actually, it was the first time we’d met - a first date, if you will - but it rapidly turned into an argument. This is the latest in a series of failed attempts to find a therapist. I struggle with therapeutic relationships. I should get some therapy for it.
Read MoreA couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog-post analysing the video for Blondie’s Rapture, and pointing out the voodoo, occult and mystic symbolism in it. I wondered if Blondie were into that sort of thing, or perhaps I was seeing things. It turned out they were, and one of them - the bassist Gary Lachman - had even become a historian of the occult. He was kind enough to give me his time for an interview.
Read MoreLast week I got the chance to interview the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, for my research on spiritual ecstasy. It was an informal conversation, and it was very kind of the Bishop to give me the benefit of his time and wisdom. I thought he'd be a good interviewee because of his interest in contemplative practices and in Christian mystics like Thomas Traherne. And he was!
Read MoreLast week, a reader called Tom wrote in with this story:
Read MoreDear Jules, I have been going through a really rough time lately and it is quite similar to your experience. I was quite a happy go lucky person through life until I had a bad terrifying trip on weed (my first time trying) I took way too much and freaked out and that traumatised me - having very anxious scary thoughts like what if I harm my self, what if I harm others - what is the meaning of life and whats the point of it all.
Read MoreI'm doing a Philosophy for Life workshop for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, which will be interpreted in sign language. It's happening next Monday, July 14, at 7pm, in the upstairs room of the Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place.
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.
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