A meta-analysis of studies on psilocybin show that high doses of the substance can alleviate symptoms of depression in people at levels comparable to the SSRI drug escitalopram, which is used to treat major depressive episodes. Researchers found that patients fared better with psilocybin - the active ingredient in 'magic mushrooms' - than with placebos. [...]

It's not often that a scientist becomes a subject for his own research; even less common when said scientist describes his brain as 'breaking' during the experiment. But that's precisely how Dr. Nico Dosenbach, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, recounted his experience under the influence of [...]

Over the course of a given day, you likely will experience tens of thousands of thoughts. It should go without saying that it is these thoughts that make up your sense of reality and your role in it. But here's the thing: the vast majority of your thoughts are not only repetitious, they're negative. We're [...]

Everywhere you turn, it seems, psychological sufferers - including a growing number of therapists and physicians treating them - are turning to psychedelics or, more specifically, 'psychedelic-assisted therapy,' to cure suffering. At the risk of harshing a lot of people's buzzes, it's unlikely that MDMA, psilocybin, ketamine, LSD, ayahuasca and a host of other mind-bending [...]

If the season has you hurting, longing, or otherwise feeling out of sorts, I urge you toward nonduality. It's the only path to truth, because it is not a path at all and has no place for all the concepts I just mentioned. It has no room for anything, including self, time, or the universe [...]

“I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” – Jesus At the age of 13 something unimaginably humiliating happened to me in front of my entire military school cadet class. Racing back that night to my empty barrack’s room, certain my life [...]

Chatting not so long ago with a friend who is struggling to overcome the twin addictions of self-loathing and alcoholism, she announced that she had resigned herself to never being able to fully recover. To which I blurted, “But why would you wish to recover in the first place? What is it that you want [...]

The motorist in front of me driving 10mph under the speed limit. An angst-ridden friend on the phone wondering how to increase his company’s sales. The blog post of a young woman bemoaning the absence of a man in her life on Valentine’s Day. A child’s psychosomatic illness because he has again forgotten his homework. [...]

Lying in bed, I turn and gaze over at my mate, the love of my life. She knows me as well as anyone can, it is with her that I feel completely understood. And yet I will never truly know her. Try as I might to share every thought and inner secret, to connect in [...]

So here I sit, the center of the known universe, population 1. If I dig and claw and scrape through all of the mind stuff accumulated over the past 47 years, if I burrow deep deep deep into the “known” part of that equation, what I uncover at the very core of my universal being [...]