Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again

photo: Alan S. Weiner for The New York Times

“It was a whole personality shift for me. I wasn’t any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people.” CLARK MARTIN, a retired psychologist, on his participation in an experiment with a hallucinogen.

New York Times

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: April 11, 2010

"As a retired clinical psychologist, Clark Martin was well acquainted with traditional treatments for depression, but his own case seemed untreatable as he struggled through chemotherapy and other grueling regimens for kidney cancer. Counseling seemed futile to him. So did the antidepressant pills he tried.

"Nothing had any lasting effect until, at the age of 65, he had his first psychedelic experience. "

Click here for the full article.

The Cloninger Self-Transcendence Test

The following was published in Time Magazine, October 25, 2004, following the cover story, "Is God in Our Genes?" by Jeffrey Kluger.

How Spiritual Are You?

To find out, take this test, which is adapted from a personality inventory devised by Washington University psychiatrist Robert Cloninger, author of Feeling Good: The Science of Well-Being

1. I often feel so connected to the people around me that it is like there is no separation between us.

True False

2. I often do things to help protect animals and plants from extinction.

True False

3. I am fascinated by the many things in life that cannot be scientifically explained.

True False

4. Often I have unexpected flashes of insight or understanding while relaxing.

True False

5. I sometimes feel so connected to nature that everything seems to be part of one living organism.

True False

6. I seem to have a "sixth sense" that sometimes allows me to know what is going to happen.

True False

7. Sometimes I have felt like I was part of something with no limits or boundaries in time and space.

True False

8. I am often called "absent-minded" because I get so wrapped up in what I am doing that I lose track of everything else.

True False

9. I often feel a strong sense of unity with all the things around me.

True False

10. Even after thinking about something a long time, I have learned to trust my feelings more than my logical reasons.

True False

11. I often feel a strong spiritual or emotional connection with all the people around me.

True False

12. Often when I am concentrating on something, I lose awareness of the passage of time.

True False

13. I have made real personal sacrifices in order to make the world a better place, like trying to prevent war, poverty and injustice.

True False

14. I have had experiences that made my role in life so clear to me that I felt very happy and excited.

True False

15. I believe that I have experienced extrasensory perception.

True False

16. I have had moments of great joy in which I suddenly had a clear, deep feeling of oneness with all that exists.

True False

17. Often when I look at an ordinary thing, something wonderful happens. I get the feeling that I am seeing it fresh for the first time.

True False

18. I love the blooming of flowers in the spring as much as seeing an old friend again.

True False

19. It often seems to other people like I am in another world because I am so completely unaware of things going on around me.

True False

20. I believe that miracles happen.

True False

SCORING:

Give yourself one point for each TRUE answer and 0 points for each FALSE answer.

14 and above = highly spiritual, a real mystic;

12-13 = spiritually aware, easily lost in the moment;

8-11 = spiritually average; could develop more spiritual life if desired;

6-7 = a practical empiricist lacking self-transcendence;

1-5 = highly skeptical, resistant to developing spiritual awareness

Demons and Devotions

The Morgan Library is currently exhibiting The Hours of Catherine of Cleves.

This is a 15th century illuminated manuscript, "the greatest Dutch illuminated manuscript in the world."
Click here for the exhibit's page on the museum's website.

I haven't been yet. Anyone want to go?

Ethics, Evolution, and the Milk of Human Kindness

An article in the Hastings Center Report on evolution and certain social traits and behaviors that are associated with religion.
Published in 1976. Although of course a lot of work has been done since then in the fields of evolutionary psychology and evolution of social behavior, this is still a very interesting introduction to the subject.

What Future?: Street Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The Human Rights Watch report on abuse of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion

The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion
By Joseph Bulbulia
Professor of Religious Studies, Victoria University P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand
Published in
Biology and Philosophy 19: 655–686, 2004.
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Here is a link to the file online. It is a PDF you can download.
Bulbulia has written some interesting things on this subject.