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Publications
Publications (34)
This article reports on integration challenges that were experienced by nine individuals who attended a three-day legal psilocybin truffle retreat in the Netherlands. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological approach, using semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of participants' (n = 30) psilocybin experiences and their after-...
Sutcliffe, Steven J., and Carole M. Cusack, eds. 2017. The Problem of Invented Religions. Oxford and New York: Routledge. x + 152 pp. ISBN: 978-1-138-09903-6 (pbk). £42.99.
Zeller, Benjamin E., ed. 2001. Handbook of UFO Religions. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill. xvii + 542 pp. ISBN: 978-90-04-43437-0 (hbk). €199.00.
Luke, David and Rory Spowers, eds. 2021. DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. xiv + 370 pp. ISBN: 978-1-64411-233-5 (pbk)
Roberts, Thomas B. 2019. MindApps: Multistate Theory and Tools for Mind Design. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. xii + 212 pp. ISBN: 978-1-62055-818-8. US$17.99 (pbk).
Bettina E. Schmidt and Jeff Leonardi (eds), Spirituality and Wellbeing: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Religious Experience and HealthSheffield, UK and Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2020, pp. vii + 248, ISBN: 9-781781-797655 (pbk). £26.95.
Recently there has been a surge of renewed interest in the psychedelic compound psilocybin. In particular, psilocybin is being studied in clinical settings as a potential breakthrough treatment for depression. Alongside this growing therapeutic interest, there has been a rise in the religious use of psilocybin, as evidenced by the creation of a num...
This article reports on the experiences of four healthy individuals who attended a legal psilocybin truffle retreat in the Netherlands. The study employed a qualitative phenomenological approach, using semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of participants' psilocybin experiences and their after-effects. The experiential themes that em...
An Exploration of the Hidden Side of Meditation
The Dark Side of Dharma explores some of the possible undesirable side effects – also known as ‘adverse effects’ - of meditation and mindfulness. Researcher Anna Lutkajtis investigates why these effects, which are well-known in spiritual and religious traditions, have been ignored in contemporary sec...
Research suggests that the clinical and therapeutic effects of psychedelics are related to their ability to induce a mystical-type experience. One particularly interesting feature of the psychedelic mystical experience is the entity encounter - people who take psychedelics sometimes describe meetings with seemingly autonomous entities which appear...
Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in Indigenous healing ceremonies in Mesoamerica since at least the sixteenth century. However, the sacramental use of mushrooms was only discovered by Westerners in the early to mid-twentieth century. Most notably, the meeting between amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson and Mazatec curandera María...
The current popularity of ‘secular’ meditation has been due in large part to its promotion in the mainstream Western media. In 1975 Time magazine ran a cover featuring an image of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation (TM) along with the headline: ‘Meditation: The Answer to All Your Problems?’ Ever since, stories about med...
Cristina Rocha, John of God: The Globalization of Brazilian Faith Healing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. xiii + 269, ISBN: 978-0-19046-671-8 (pbk).
In contemporary Western society, meditation techniques that were previously taught within the context of Eastern religious traditions are now increasingly being practiced in secular settings. While the boundary between the secular and the religious is blurred, popular meditation techniques such as Transcendental Meditation, vipassana, and mindfulne...
Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Siv Éllen Kraft and James R. Lewis, New Age in Norway. Sheffield, UK and Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2017, pp. xiv + 290, ISBN: 978-1-78179 417-3 (pbk).
In contemporary Western meditation-based convert Buddhist lineages, the term ‘dark night’ has been adopted in order to describe a variety of meditation-related difficulties. While the term dark night is not a Buddhist term - rather it is an abbreviated form of the expression ‘dark night of the soul’ and derives from Christian mysticism - it has rec...
