This week’s (exceptionally long and varied) offering of intellectual enrichment includes: an argument that the likely death of economic growth is the underlying theme of the current U.S. presidential election; thoughts on the rise of a real-life dystopia of universal algorithmic automation; an account of how the founder of TED became disgusted with the direction…
Remote Viewing, Reality, and the Human Condition: Reflections on a Weekend with Russell Targ
There is no other discipline that I know which engages at the same time a person’s critical faculties and his imagination and then stretches them both to a comparable extent. — John Beloff, “The Study of the Paranormal as an Educative Experience” On the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, the United States’…
Cosmic Horror, Sacred Terror, and the Nightside Transformation of Consciousness
What’s this? A discussion of current horror cinema that contrasts H. P. Lovecraft’s worldview of cosmic horror, pessimism, and despair with Arthur Machen’s worldview of redemptive sacred terror? And it’s published by — wait for it — Christianity Today magazine? The stars, it seems, are aligning. One is rife with despair, the other clings to…
The future of reading at the interstices of print and digital literature
Here are some highly interesting remarks and reflections on the rise of electronic reading and the shape of the literary future (and present) from Yale University literature and reading scholar Jessica Pressman, whose “current research focuses on how 21st century literature — both in print and online — responds to the threat of an increasingly…
Horror and Apocalypse: The Dark Mirror Film Festival – October 20, 2012
Apologies to all Teeming Brain readers for the lack of a new Recommended Reading post today. All of my spare time this week has been taken up by various other commitments, including writing and turning in the first installment of “Numinosities,” my new column about horror, religion, and philosophy for [Nameless] Magazine. Then there’s the…
We must connect our science with our humanity to elevate both
At a minimum, the magnificent cosmos provides some perspective on our parochial, human-created problems, be they social or political. Nature is organized in better ways, from which we can learn. The love of nature can bring us together and help us to appreciate that we are part of something far greater than ourselves. Society has…
When humans fuse with apps, what will happen to the soul?
Beware the coming fusion of humans — you, me, all of us — with our smartphones and their array of apps for everything from finding directions to buying groceries to making ethical decisions. And make no mistake: this fusion is indeed coming. Or rather, it’s already here in nascent form. Just look around yourself and…
Soothsayers, Seers, and other Specters of the Skeptical Mind
I remember the last time I consulted a soothsayer. ‘Twas in the early of the year, and sorrow had wont to call upon my home. Where, I thought dimly, shall I find succor now my very rooms themselves speak to me of tragedy? Aye me, the pains of a soul lost in this ill-lit world…
UFOs, cultural synchronicities, and “a very real power in the creative process”
Over at Silver Screen Saucers, the always-interesting Website about Hollywood’s long-running engagement with UFOs, you’ll find a very long and totally absorbing essay by author and illustrator Mike Clelland about “a deep dark hole of synchro-weirdness” that opened up for him when he rewatched the 1974 television movie The Stranger Within, which he first saw…
Sleep paralysis, horror fiction, daemonic creativity, and dark religion: Matt Cardin interviewed
Teeming Brain founder/editor Matt Cardin was interviewed on the October 14, 2012 edition of the Expanding Mind Radio show, which is devoted to exploring “the cultures of consciousness.” The hour-long conversation with co-hosts Erik Davis and Maja D’Aoust delves into the deep psychological, philosophical, and spiritual underpinnings of the dark side of religious experience and…