Esoterica

Psychedelic psilocybin therapy for depression granted Breakthrough Therapy status by FDA

In an extraordinary step forward for the psychedelic drug research community, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just given psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression a Breakthrough Therapy designation. This classification suggests the treatment has demonstrated significant potential in early clinical evidence, allowing the FDA to assist and expedite subsequent development and review processes.

The FDA's Breakthrough Therapy designation was created in 2012 as a way of presenting a faster pathway to approval for drugs that display treatment advantages over current options for serious or life-threatening conditions. While not all Breakthrough Therapy treatments may ultimately prove efficacious and make it to market, the designation is generally a positive thumbs-up from the FDA that it's potentially useful and should be expedited.

The specific designation in this instance is directed at a phase IIb trial currently underway across Europe and North America. The research is investigating the optimal dose range for psilocybin in regards to severe treatment-resistant depression. Prior research has found that one to two doses of the psychedelic agent, administered in controlled settings, can markedly reduce a person's depressive symptoms. The safety of these treatments has also been established through earlier research.

Once Upon a Time There Was a Chymical Wedding

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

"Stories are medicine. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything -- we need only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories." ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run With the Wolves

I'm a little late to this party -- two years to be exact -- but I have recently fallen in love with Once Upon a Time. Once again I tried to curl up with a little diversionary fluff and was instead abruptly pulled into the heart of the mysteries. As ever with these pop culture creations I am left to wonder if the writers are just randomly pulling these profound archetypes out of their deep subconscious, totally unaware of the implications, or if it's a carefully scripted foray into Gnosis.

The central plot is clever and entertaining. The evil queen from Snow White, she of the poison apple, takes her revenge by casting a spell that drags a myriad of fairy tale characters into a small town in Maine. There they live trapped in time and unable to remember who they really are. But the curse may be undone by the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, who was secreted out of the enchanted forest before the curse fell and predestined to return at the age of 28. Twenty-eight years later Emma Swan is living a lonely life in Boston until a young boy claiming to be the son she put up for adoption pulls her to Storybrooke. He insists she must fulfill her destiny and break the curse cast by his adoptive mother, who he is quite sure is the evil queen in his very unusual book of  fairy tales.

Each episode weaves together the complimentary narratives of the characters' lives in Storybrooke and their history as fairy tale creatures. It's skillful, if somewhat predictable, storytelling. But it's in the imagery that the creators tip their hand. They speak the language of symbols far too well for me to take the series lightly. From the first episode I was struck by the subtle but brilliant use of sacred geometry, character names, and striking tableaux. 

It is essentially a mystical story employing the most basic numerical code to appeal to conscious oneness.

TED Finds Deepak Chopra's Lost Talk

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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As discussed, one of Deepak Chopra's criticisms of TED's censorship referred to his own talk, in which he rebutted Richard Dawkins in 2002. He apparently shamed Chris Anderson into retrieving it from the vault of hidden ideas. He has posted it, but in "the naughty corner" like Graham Hancock's and Rupert Sheldrake's talks. As with those, it's in an unembeddable format. It also comes complete with snark and insulting framing about its "misleading" science. But at least we get to hear it and I now have. I also forced myself to sit through the Dawkins talk he was responding to, which can be found here. It's actually titled "Militant Atheism." Wow.

Chopra's write-up on the restoration of the talk is here. His talk turns out to be mystical in orientation, arguing that where science is failing is in viewing the universe as separate from the observer. His quote of Krishnamurti thoroughly won me over.

A Christian fundamentalist was once conversing with the noted India spiritual teacher, J. Krishnamurti.

"The more I listen to you, the more convinced I am that you must be an atheist," the fundamentalist said.

"I used to be an atheist," Krishnamurti replied, "until I realized that I was God."

The fundamentalist was shocked. "Are you denying the divinity of Jesus Christ?"

Krishnamurti shrugged. "I've never denied anyone their divinity. Why would I do it to Jesus Christ?"

That the audience laughed at this anecdote while militant atheists scowled, seeing an imminent danger to sanity, reason, science, and public safety, shows how far apart two worldviews can be. But I persist in believing that an expanded science will take consciousness into account, including higher consciousness. Until it does, our common goal, to understand the nature of reality, will never be reached. A universe that we aren't participating in makes no sense, and our participation takes place at the level of consciousness, nowhere else.

Spiritual But Not Religious

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." ~ Teilhard de Chardin

If it were up to me, I'd retire the phrase "spiritual but not religious." I consider it effectively meaningless. To my way of thinking, we can't not be spiritual. We are spirit. But I'm not being fair to the idiomatic meaning of that phrase, which could be more fairly stated as, "searching for meaning beyond the confines of organized religion."

However problematic the phrase, it is a growing trend. This seems to rankle a number of religious authorities. A quick search through the Huffington Post religion section brings up a fair sampling of disdainful diatribes against all these dilettantes who think they can have God without the hard work of religious practice in like-minded community. I read a number of these posts when they came out, sighed, and moved on.

There's Pastor Lillian Daniel who is sick and tired of hearing from anonymous strangers on planes that God can be found in sunsets. She just wishes the nonreligious would stop boring her with their irrelevant observations. And, no, I'm not overstating her tone. "Please stop boring me," is her subtitle.

There's Alan Miller's lightning rod of a post bemoaning the religious illiteracy of a populace that can't name more than four of the ten commandments. He casts religion almost entirely in Judeo-Christian terms and dismisses all else as superstition. A good rebuttal can be found here.

The Increasingly Blatant Symbolism of Doctor Who

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes." ~ Doctor Who

A while ago Stephen Fry made waves when he bemoaned the infantalizing nature of BBC programming and characterized Doctor Who as "not for adults." Perhaps Fry, for all his many talents and artistic sensibility, is one of those hardcore atheists who has no appreciation for the power of myth. Admittedly, I haven't spent a lot of time on the mythical underpinnings of the show, although I did explore one episode's point towards indigenous creation mythology here. 

I will also give Fry benefit of the doubt and assume his comments in 2010 pertained entirely to the pre-Matt Smith years. There is no question that with the massive production changes after David Tennant's departure, came a more interesting, and I dare say, more adult show. Smith, as an actor, has more depth and gravitas than Tennant. (Christopher Eccleston was also brilliant and I took his departure hard. I know. I know. David Tennant was the most beloved Doctor ever. Blah, blah, blah... whatever.)

Not only is the writing under Steven Moffat darker and edgier, there has been a peeling away of the veils that obscured the core mythos. It seems rather obvious in discussing a show that opens with a trip through a wormhole, that we're talking about alchemy/kundalini/stargate mythology. But with the recent Christmas episode, "The Snowmen," key archetypes were even more blatant than they were in the London Olympics. Even the advertising was provocative.

William Henry on Merging with Icons

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

From For the Sexes by William Blake

A while ago I posted something about the pernicious role of iconoclasm -- and the second commandment -- in keeping humanity from direct interface with the divine. William Henry had touched upon the issue in an article on St. Francis of Assissi who developed stigmata, at least in part, because of his spiritual merging with religious iconography. I posited then that part of the motivation for iconoclasm is to keep us from the transcendent and mystical experiences that the Church has always found threatening. Direct experience of God was not something that just anyone was supposed to have.

I am currently reading Henry's Secret of Sion and he addresses the issue of icons as spiritual triggers, and the cruelty of a system that would deny them to humanity, very directly. He suggests that prior to the dark reign of the idol smashers, icons served an important and known function doing exactly what the second commandment says they shouldn't.

When the icons were made alchemy was the normal way of interacting with the world. Everything was viewed as in the process of transmutation or changing into something else -- like the acorn into the oak -- simultaneously unraveling and being reborn. Everything was transmutable, including the human body, which was viewed as a 'pupal' form of an ascended spiritual being, usually symbolized by the butterfly (earlier by the phoenix). All that was required to effect the transmutation was the Philosopher's Stone (= the pure tone or ring of the gate.) This (S)tone causes the body to emit or secrete an elixir - the Secretion of the Ages - that purifies the body, transfiguring it to light.

This is the key benefit of the Transfiguration icons. These images were designed not just to help the early Christians to teach about the Transfiguration through pretty pictures, but also to encourage them to re-shape their lives in accordance with the  hope or expectation of transforming into light (something our culture does not support). Through contemplation, meditation and reflection on the icon we begin to reflect the Light experienced by Jesus in our lives.

Unfortunately, in the seventh century Byzantine Emperor Leo III banned icons (726-729) in response to criticism from adherents of the new religion of Islam who proclaimed that icon/doors were false idols (more later).

. . .

Analyticial Thought Undermines Religious Belief

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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"Our intuitions can be phenomenally useful, and analytic thinking isn't some oracle of the truth," says Will Gervais, co-author of a new study demonstrating how analytical thought reduces religious faith. His phrasing is inadvertently hilarious. An oracle is, by definition, intuitive, and is the conduit for divine information. And this study bolsters earlier research showing that intuition and faith are as closely linked as the analytical is to not-faith.

The University of British Columbia study not only affirms that analytical personalities are less likely to be religious, it demonstrates that taxing the left brain decreases belief amongst more intuitive personalities.

People who are intuitive thinkers are more likely to be religious, but getting them to think analytically even in subtle ways decreases the strength of their belief, according to a new study in Science.

. . .

Analytic thinking undermines belief because, as cognitive psychologists have shown, it can override intuition. And we know from past research that religious beliefs—such as the idea that objects and events don't simply exist but have a purpose—are rooted in intuition. "Analytic processing inhibits these intuitions, which in turn discourages religious belief," [Ara] Norenzayan explains.

To Suffer a Witch

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Put this in the broad category of things I really don't want to write about. But I'm afraid I have to. In a curious synchronicity I noticed the latest drivel from Rob Kerby on my start page. One of these days I will remove the Beliefnet feed, but a combination of morbid curiosity and laziness has prevented it thus far. (For the back story on the Beliefnet news feed's devolution into a reactionary, bigoted, wingnut megaphone for the Christianist Kerby, see here and here.) Kerby's latest bit of wrongheadedness is a diatribe on the dangers of witchcraft. Why is this synchronous? This may be a little hard to follow but bear with me.

Let me start by saying that Kerby's biggest mistake is in conflating certain third world, tribal fears of witchcraft with Pagan faiths. He expresses dismay at Harry Potter for trivializing the dangers of witchery and at the Cornwall schools' inclusion of Paganism in its religion curriculum. This is the first synchronicity. But even more curious is that I was watching this fascinating video last night which had me thinking about a very particular usage of the term "witchcraft." It's a documentary on shaman and "vegetalista" Don Emilio Andrade Gomez who more than once uses the term witchcraft to describe the dark practice of sorcery. A lot of this could be written off to semantic differences but the distinction is too important to leave to the Rob Kerbys of the world... because that kind of thinking gets people killed.

Karen Armstrong on Religion as Unknowing

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.




In this wonderful lecture, Karen Armstrong tackles the big questions and determines that there are no answers -- not if you're doing it right. As I wrote yesterday, embracing unknowing is a key to dismantling oppressive hierarchy and abuses of power. And willingness to embrace mystery is the pathway to God.

What is God? The former nun recalls the answer she learnt in catechism: "God is the supreme spirit who alone exists of himself and is infinite in all perfections." That answer, while far too heady for an eight year old, is still too limiting to be meaningful. Instead Armstrong turns to the teachings of Maimonides, Avicenna, and Thomas Aquinas whose thoughts on the matter she paraphrases.

God is not the supreme spirit. God is not the supreme being. God is not a being at all. God is being itself.

What is religion? Again, there is no simple answer according to Armstrong. Religious experience shouldn't be definable. It should defy explanation.

In the pre-modern world, good theology was meant to tip you into a moment of transcendence and silence where you realized that you'd gone beyond the reach of words and concepts. Because our minds are tuned to transcendence.

Herman Cain: Napoleon Hill Fan?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I knew something sounded familiar about this staggering quote from Herman Cain regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself! ... It is not a person's fault if they succeeded, it is a person's fault if they failed.

I've placed it. Cain's statement sounds a lot like this little gem from Napleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich.

SUCCESS REQUIRES NO APOLOGIES, FAILURE PERMITS NO ALIBIS.

As discussed here, that's an exact quote -- all caps, bad grammar, and all. And I think it's a fairly heartless philosophy. Worse, as I've observed many times, much of "new thought" is basically apologia for the worst excesses of capitalism. It's little wonder that books like The Secret get the full sanction of the corporate media. (It's also, arguably, why James Arthur Ray got the kid gloves treatment throughout the sweat lodge trial.) Poor people have no one to blame but themselves. And having money and success equals legitimacy. Nothing to threaten the power structure there.

Does James Ray Disprove the Law of Attraction?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Meryl Davids Landau asks if the James Ray sweat lodge trial means there is no law of attraction. In an article that is really a study in cognitive dissonance, Landau extols the virtues of the law of attraction philosophy and how it's worked in her own life. She concludes:

Ultimately, then, the James Ray trial doesn't say anything about the truth of the law of attraction. It only says something about Ray: That if he does sincerely believe in the power of this universal principle, he somehow didn't put it into practice as well as he might have.

But if the law of attraction is a universal principle as basic as gravity, everything that occurs should say something about the truth of it. We don't put universal principles into practice and we don't have to believe in them. If we fail to practice the law of gravity well, we don't go floating off into space.

One can certainly understand Landau's desire for a kinder, gentler law of attraction; one where our great results are testament but our disasters don't prove anything at all. She's surely a more compassionate person than her philosophical forebear Napoleon Hill who wrote in his famous tome Think and Grow Rich, "SUCCESS REQUIRES NO APOLOGIES, FAILURE PERMITS NO ALIBIS." (That's an exact quote, complete with the obnoxious, all caps format and bad grammar. I take no responsibility for either.)

Oprah, James Ray, and the Cult of Victim Blame

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

A link to this bit of sheer insanity was posted on Connie Joy's Facebook page the other day. Someone called patharding riffed on Oprah's commentary from her sign-off as follows:

Posted on May 27, 2011 5:40 PM

I'm curious what you people think of this:

“Time and again the theme that kept showing itself in our early
years on the show was PEOPLE MAKING BAD CHOICES…and then blaming
everybody but themselves for the state of their lives…”

“Nobody but YOU is responsible for YOUR LIFE! It doesn’t matter what
your momma did. It doesn’t matter what your daddy didn’t do. YOU are
responsible for YOUR LIFE!…”

“…you are responsible for the energy that you create for yourself
and you are responsible for the energy that you bring to others.”

–Oprah Winfrey (from her final show)

The Dark Night of the Soul

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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I stumbled upon this very insightful post on the dark night of the soul. (It can also be found here.) Here's an excerpt but I think the whole thing is a must-read for anyone who is going through this painful  process of alignment.

The dark night of the soul is a process many spiritual seekers go through at some point in their lives, I being one of them. The dark night is not mentioned that much in spiritual texts and teachings. A lot of the times, we are being told to be happy, raise your vibration, look to the light, but none of this will be lasting until you have loved the dark.

The dark night of the soul is an overall beautiful experience where a person’s ego/false self is “dying” to their true Self which is LOVE or in other words one is realizing the ego self is false and never really existed. This process can occur at any point in one’s life, but it usually emerges after a spiritual seeker has attained a lot of spiritual knowledge or growth. This is because the ego is now being called out for what it is and it tightens its grips on you to hide you from the light that you are.

Even though this is a very beautiful and sacred process, it can be perceived at the time as very difficult. Especially when you are in the thick of the fog. This is why it is called the dark night of the soul (it may feel like a dark century of the soul to some lol). You feel as if you are stuck in the dark with no hope of seeing the light again. You already feel totally alone due to this process, and ontop of that it is not talked about often in spiritual texts. This is because a lot of us look for the light only and try to run away from the dark, not realizing that the dark will only grow larger the more you ignore it.

Many think they have done something wrong when the symptoms of the Dark Night appear. Especially if they just went through so much perceived spiritual growth. This is furthest from the truth! When you find yourself in the Dark Night show gratitude because you are going through a sort of rites of passage or a spiritual detox. The pain you feel is the pain you have tried to suppress for years, decades, and even lifetimes. It is now finally bubbling up to the surface to be healed with the love you give it. Even though it seems painful to face this pain, you should feel honored that this pain is finally flowing out of you. We don’t even realize the heavy baggage that we have held onto for so long.

Iconoclasts, Stigmata Martyrs, and William Henry

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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I have previously expressed my amusement that so many of the greatest proponents of the ten commandments consistently violate the second. The most devout Christians I've known through the years have surrounded themselves with religious imagery. They bow and pray before crosses. They also wear them. Catholics, in particular, are heavily invested in statues of saints and the Blessed Virgin, some of which are believed to have healing properties and even exude divine unction. (Yes. In many cases it turns out to be a coating of air-born cooking oils most likely caused by frying a lot of zeppoles but we don't need to go there.)

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.

The bottom line: Most Christians -- and Catholics in particular -- are idolators. The prohibition in the second commandment was probably a reaction against Egyptian practices and useful for stamping out pagan practices as Christianity expanded. And as I've pointed out previously, the iconoclast movements have long since been abandoned by Jews and Christians, making the second commandment a sort of vestigial relic.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee on Dangerous Love

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

This is a brief excerpt of a talk by Sufi scholar Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, whom I referenced recently here. Despite its brevity, it's a surprisingly rich and compelling explanation of the difference between mystical and romantic love and the misinterpretation of mystical poets like Rumi.

James Arthur Ray: Tweeting Through the Darkness

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

In an earlier post, I made reference to James Arthur Ray's "thoroughly nonsensical defense of The Secret's blame the victim idiocy, in light of things like 9/11 and the Holocaust." Allow me to elucidate. Here is the quote from ABC News:

In that interview, Ray defended "The Secret" against critics who asked if the victims of 9/11 or the Holocaust are to blame for simply thinking incorrectly.

"I know people of the Jewish faith and heritage who don't necessarily believe the Holocaust was bad," Ray said. "Now that might be shocking to you but I have people on record who have said, hey there's a lot of good things that came out of that, a lot of lessons, a lot of opportunities for the world. "

I don't personally know any Jews -- or anyone else really -- who would characterize the Holocaust as not "bad," so I really wonder who he's been talking to. But that's almost beside the point. Ray's answer dodges the question. One could certainly argue that every dark cloud has a silver lining and that the Holocaust did provide certain opportunities for growth, learning, and social advancement. But that has nothing to do with whether or not victims of horrendous adversity bring it on themselves with their "thoughts."

Global Village, Global Oneness?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee poses us an interesting challenge on The Huffington Post. Can we use the global communication potential of the Internet to experience unity consciousness with the world?

I remember when I first accessed the Internet in the early Nineties. I think that my children were using AOL and I went online to see what these "chat rooms" were. But although there was not much content in those days, I was struck by its potential and possibility. At that time I was having mystical experiences of the oneness that is present in all of life. In these moments I was made aware of the interconnectedness of all of creation, and how everything is a living expression of divine oneness. This first time that I went online I saw in that moment how the Internet could give the whole of humanity direct access to this interconnectedness and global oneness. All that is required is a computer and a connection.

Almost twenty years later the Internet is one of the central tools of our global connectivity. In the last few years it has radically changed our culture, how we communicate and access information. From laptops and cybercafes all around the world, even in unexpectedly remote locations, we are forming an interconnected whole, a network of human consciousness. And yet, although we are more and more immersed in this new form of communication, we do not appear to realize its deeper significance. There is the danger, that, as in the words of T.S. Eliot, we "have the experience but miss the meaning."

The Next Level

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Graham Hancock had this video posted to his Facebook page, so I took a look at it. It's a neat little round-up of ideas on transformation and multi-dimensional awaremeness, from thinkers as diverse as Joseph Campbell and Joe Rogan.

Sharon Osbourne, Susan Boyle, and Facing Our Shadow

Crossposted from Celestial Reflections.




I have this theory that celebrity news stories pull our eyes away from news of far more important, world changing events, because celebrities are, at bottom, just people whose very human foibles we can we relate to. Despite all their money and fame, the vicissitudes of their relationships and their little human dramas reflect the best and the worst in all of us. I was reminded of this recently, when news broke of a very unfortunate incident involving Sharon Osbourne and a microphone. I have posted the video of Osbourne's interview on Sirius Radio above, but I warn you, gentle reader, that it is not for the faint of heart.

Osbourne, who is a judge on 'America's Got Talent,' slammed the 'Britain's Got Talent' superstar's looks on Sirius XM's 'The Opie & Anthony Show.' She says Boyle was "hit with the f***ing ugly stick"....as opposed to the surgeon's scalpel?

Here is a partial transcript of her expletive-laced tirade. You can watch the entire thing below.

"I like everybody to do well. Even somebody that looks like a slapped arse. God bless her. It's like, 'You go girl'. She does look like a hairy arsehole. She is a lovely lady. You just want to say 'god bless' and here's a Gillette razor."