Psychedelic Experiences, Meditation, and Why We Desperately Need to Transcend the Body | #7

This is part two of our important traits of Neomodernism series. We're going to discuss our need to transcend the corporeal (the body). We'll talk a little Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick, some Saint Augustine, and we'll dive into Dr. Roland R. Griffith’s research at Johns Hopkins University on psychedelics. Why does it seem like the research that came out in the 1960s was largely ignored? Whereas, today, the research into expanding the mind through psychedelics seems to be gathering quite a lot of steam? We'll have to think about that and try to answer it in this episode. I talk a bit about Brian Muraresku’s book: The Immortality Key as well and why, even among atheists, it seems like religious language is still the most accurate language from describing psychedelic experiences. And if you start feeling too overwhelmed by the experience, you need not worry. We're also going to talk about meditation and how we try to transcend the body through mindfulness. It all comes together with a section from Walt Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric." Can you ask for a better episode? Probably. But, I can't deliver one as of yet.

Research notes

Gabriel Hess: https://aporia.byu.edu/pdfs/hess-refuting_the_claim_that_augustine_is_opposed_to_corporeality.pdf

David G. Hunter “Augustine on the Body” A Companion to Augustine

Griffiths: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29020861/

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