Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, who has spoken at (for example) the Rhine Research Center, writes in the current issue of Newsweek about his personal discovery and conviction that consciousness exists beyond the body. His argument is especially intriguing because, although it is based on his own personal experience, it goes beyond the limp and lame argument…
Category: Psychology & Consciousness
Horror, religion, Lovecraft, sleep paralysis, creativity, reality: Matt Cardin interviewed
Horror, religion, Lovecraft, sleep paralysis, fantasy, science fiction, consciousness, creativity, reality, the dystopian hazards of an uber-online lifestyle — these are all topics broached in an extensive new interview with Teeming Brain founder and editor Matt Cardin by fellow idea-driven horror writer Ted E. Grau at The Cosmicomicon. (Ted is also, of course, the author…
Book Recommendation: “Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness”
Readers of The Teeming Brain will find something of more than passing interest in the just-released nonfiction anthology Exploring the Edge Realms of Consciousness: Liminal Zones, Psychic Science, and the Hidden Dimensions of the Mind. This is indicated not only by the book’s heady subtitle, and not only by fact that it is co-edited by…
Western civilization and the divided brain
In his 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, psychiatrist, doctor, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar Iain McGilchrist mounts a fascinating argument for the idea “that the division of the brain into two hemispheres is essential to human existence, making possible incompatible versions of…
Study: Human psychology combines natural and supernatural thinking
AUSTIN, Texas — Reliance on supernatural explanations for major life events, such as death and illness, often increases rather than declines with age, according to a new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin. The study, published in the June issue of Child Development, offers new insight into developmental learning. “As children assimilate…
Russell Brand, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Graham Hancock on psychedelics, consciousness, media, society, and reality
In an event that was mind-expanding (or -blowing) in its own right, simply because it happened, last November Daniel Pinchbeck, Graham Hancock, and Russell Brand (!) teamed up to speak at a Reality Sandwich retreat at the Boulder Mountain Guest Ranch in Utah. They ended up having, in the words of the event’s description at…
James Fadiman, psychedelic heretic
Several weeks ago I talked on the phone for an hour and a half with Dr. James Fadiman, one of the central figures in the history of psychedelic research and a co-founder of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. I’ll be publishing the conversation as a Teeming Brain interview in the near future, but for now…
Study links mind-body dualism to unhealthy behaviors
First, a philosophical review for those who need it: as a philosophical term the word “dualism” refers to the belief in a fundamental split between the mind and the body, and more broadly between the mind and the physical world. It is classically associated with Descartes, who in the seventeenth century proposed that reality consists…
The Internet’s corrosive mental effects: A growing problem requiring a deliberate defensive response
For those of you who, like me, have been interested to hear the background drumbeat of warnings about the mental and neurological effects of the Internet revolution over the past several years — think Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and The Shallows, just for starters — a recent, in-depth article about this very subject…
Psychiatry’s internal war over “mental illness” unhinges everything
Have you or anybody you care about ever suffered from depression? How about bipolar disorder? Autism? Schizophrenia? Attention-deficit disorder? Obviously, given the prevalence of these mental and neurological illnesses, the answer is almost certainly affirmative. Or then again, maybe not. Here’s the dirty little trick that’s been pulled on all of us: each of those…