Gwyneth, Greta & Pope Francis
Watkins' London bookstore has come up with its annual top 100 of "spiritually influential living people".
Drugs vs therapy
“Ketamine clinics are booming across the US. According to psychedelic fund PsyMed, there were around 20 ketamine clinics in 2019. By the end of last year, there were reportedly over 600 independent ketamine clinics, as well as chains like Mindbloom, Field Trip and Delic with multiple clinics and home delivery services. Since the pandemic began, ketamine start-ups have reported rapid growth: in 2022, Field Trip reported 200% yearly growth, Mindbloom reported 420% employee growth, and Delic says its net assets grew 500% in a year. Profits from ketamine grew from $8.3 million in 2017 to $185 million in 2022… […]
Ketamine companies are riding the wave of psychedelic hype. There’s so much excitement about psilocybin therapy, but it’s been slow to get FDA approval. Meanwhile, people are desperate for relief from mental and physical health problems, and investors are impatient for returns. Ketamine already has FDA approval as an anaesthetic. Any US medical provider can apparently offer it off-label for whatever condition they want, from depression and anxiety to OCD and eating disorders, to alcoholism, drug addiction, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, self-esteem issues, self-actualization… you name it!”
https://ecstaticintegration.substack.com/p/ketamine-the-psychedelic-renaissance
Who is independent?
“Still waiting for a qualified, independent socio-religio-philo-psychological etc study of this movement & its history. Independent in the sense of non-affiliated. I.e., by people who are not invested or too happy in their object of study.”
When I posted this post on my private page a couple of years ago (which I repostated today as a “memory”, with the text above) I received some criticism.
That time I had written:
“Today, 130 years ago, this man, Martinus Thomsen, was born in a village in Jutland. Poor, not much schooling. He eventually trained as a dairyman.
In his thirties, he had a strong religious experience that would characterize the rest of his life. He began to write, lecture, o paint. A couple of hundred strange pictures (like the one he’s working on here). A Scandinavian “mystic”, one must well call him.
Still, pretty much unknown to the general public. As well to scholars. Only now is there an independent academic research project on its way. A study Of what he actually accomplished, I’ve heard, and of the movement that grew around him. Congrats, Martinus!”
That’s the thing about “independence.” After all, several academic papers have been written about Martinus and his “cosmology”, which have been approved, at various academic levels. A-, B-, C-, Master’s level. Yes, recently there was even a doctoral thesis. However, as far as I know, exclusively by supporters. But aren’t these works independent, after all? At least at a higher level, there are rigorous requirements on the text to be of good quality?
And I still feel like there’s something I’m missing because I’m going to think it can be really interesting.
There has something to do with Martinus Thomsen’s own claims – and how he is thus perceived, worshipped within the movement – to be a perfect individual with infallible knowledge, which I find difficult to see that it does not risk “messing it up”.
Someone objected at the time, that e.g. psychoanalysts write about Sigmund Freud, is that background disqualifying as well? Isn’t their in-depth knowledge of history, theories, etc., rather an asset?
But I don’t buy that. No one (or at least very few, and those probably enjoys no great respect) would claim that Freud was infallible, incorruptible, a perfect man who recorded the Truth in his books.
Am I being too harsh?
Narcissism and conspiracy beliefs
Summer reading. Something to ponder on.
Maybe one get some answers if and when one dives into the text. But a few thoughts only, based on the title and abstract. States and traits? Boosted narcissism as something you are, basically. Or more like something that a certain system of thought might tempt you to. Because conspiracy theories, even the most far-reaching -Trump as a Savior, chemtrails, etc. – I mean, there are lots of people who are attracted to such world declarations. Sure, there’s something “narcissistic” about it. Us and them. The darkness, the threat, the stupidity, are on the outside of ourselves, etc. But on deeper level is it real Narcissism?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X22001051?via%3Dihub
Atheistic spirituality?
I wanted to write down some thoughts on “spirituality”… What do I think about with that? What attracts me? I don’t think I’m really interested in the subject in general. Or the big subject of religion, for that matter. I’m not a religious scholar, a religious historian. I have no interest in reading books about such things, to “learn more”.
What interests me, however, is the special attitude that is often associated with religion and spirituality. That is, a reverence, wonder, a healthy “subordination” to existence. As I think (know) can be found both within modern spirituality and, for example, in Christianity.
The thought systems themselves are no guarantee that this feeling will arise, however. That the individual’s life experience should have this special “existential” quality. A degree of wonder, reverence for creation, or whatever you are to call it, seems to run along its own “axis”? Contrary to theology or philosophy. I would like to go so far as to say that if one allows wonder, a humbling sense of smallness, to be what defines “spirituality”, then it may as well be in an atheist. The atheist, the Christian, as well ar the contemporary holistic spiritual individual, can be united by something that separates them all from (in turn): the cocky atheist sceptic who ravages and provokes in online comments sections; the bespoke Christian for whom the solution and the answer to everything is “Have you received Jesus as your personal Savior?” and the “spiritual” person who is sure to have answers to – really, in detail – everything between heaven and earth. Spirituality or religion is not synonymous with wonder. (The theologian and developmental psychologist James W Fowler, with his research on the different stages of “faith”, has been important to me! It is summarized and published in Swedish in a wonderful little book, by Göran Bergstrand, called “From naivety to naivety”.)
I saw this interview a long time ago. I’ve hardly read anything by Dawkins, either before or after, but know that he often appeare as a rather affected atheist. I didn’t know about Daniel Dennett. But this is a very nice existential, “spiritual-like”? conversations that make an impression on me. (To get to the stuff I refer to, please play forward to 20:45.)
A healthy faith in God?
It’s such a big subject, that perhaps you shouldn’t even bother with. A mystery you just should leave behind? It easily gets into an emotional war of positions between for or against.
Yet! I wanted to try to gather my thoughts on the concept of God. The topic has also been raised in a couple of posts recently. Is God personal or impersonal? Neither or both? Is it a personal, living entity with whom one can have a relationship? Or merely “The Universe”, something och someone that is elevated above good and evil? A metaphysical operating system, merely a rounding mark out in kosmos, a connection station for one’s “karma” most? (In the interview study I did a few years ago, with people who had an alternative, new-age outlook on life — as I myself had for so long — it was this area that made me most puzzled, even sad.) I myself is most of all an agnostic, but a warm one, sort of, as I’ve explained before. I’m deeply interested in working God relations. Regardless of this being simple animations of existence that we make ourselves. Or if it’s real.
And in practice, psychologically, maybe it doesn’t matter that much?
(Illustration: “Cosmic Tailor” by Rodrick Howard)
Live life
“The acceptance or interest in things like reincarnation, omen, telepathy, communication with deceased relatives, etc., is big. While several of the beliefs and phenomena addressed in these surveys overlap with what is commonly called superstition and should have been able to coexist with the long-dominant religion, reincarnation is, for example, a comparatively exotic notion in a Christian cultural circle. In the studies mentioned above, the idea that the individual should be reborn in a new physical body is supported by about one in four respondents. Hammer (2004) writes that “in only forty years, reincarnation has gone from being a belief held by members of some Theosophical and occultist circles to becoming one of the most widely embraced religious conceptions of our time.”
This is something I’ve been amazed by for quite some time. Within New Age Spirituality, etc., being reborn into a new body is seen as self-evident. So, it’s not that the belief is so strong within these circles, that is remarkable, I think, because there it is needed, so that the thought system should be kept together. But by people in general? I tried to capture it in the intro to my degree project (above). With the quote by Olav Hammer. It has been twenty years since then. (I guess one count hippie culture, the late 60ies, early 70ies, as the starting point). It’s been a while since I’ve looked at surveys, but it’s hard to think the numbers have gone backwards. About 25% of people in the Western world, slightly higher in younger people, usually state that they believe or at least do not want to rule out rebirth, in a new body, in the physical ordinary world. Reincarnation, that is. (Here are some statistics that have 10-15 years on the neck.)
Or has it become a straw man for me while the world around has moved on? That the numbers has in fact fallen? That in 2022 people on general believe more in an extinction, a finito, true death? (Faith in the Kingdom of Heaven, somewhere where you come and stay forever, i.e., I don’t think has grown?) Or has the belief become more Buddhist, “Nirvanian”, that you die and is sucked up or transformed into something bigger?
I tried to google the subject. In the US there is PEW Research wich does huge attitude surveys, including of what people believe in. This one is from 2021. Whether the result can be transferred to Sweden is perhaps unclear. Data on more traditional religiosity, faith in Heaven, God, how many people identify as religious, etc., is probably very different between our two countries. But perhaps a notion of reincarnation doesn’t differ so much between Americans and Swedes though?
How to understand this? That reincarnation is a fact, and when mainstream Christian theology has loosen its grip, secularization that is, then this idea of reincarnation comes to the surface, as something one always has deeply felts is true? Or is the change an effect of increased individualization, one’s personal project? That it would be so unthinkable, almost a mockery, if it all just ended? Or a mix? Or something else?
(Then there’s the possible clinical implication, of course. But it’s a completely different track… In some alternative psychological theories & therapies, it is thought that symptoms and disorders are in fact due to the traumas of such past existences, which must be sorted out.)
Freud and Atheism
This is very thoughtful. I myself have great respect for Sigmund Freud, his thoughts on when religion can get problematic, but I do think Jones has an interesting point.
Spiritual confusion
Why is it that so many people within “New Age spirituality” end up wrong & at odds with consensus on – in short – all the burning issues? 😳 First there was the climate change. Trump… Then came Covid. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
I have some hypotheses myself. The observation is correct, I know. But how to explain it all? I think there are several pieces in it… A rebellious, binary “you-understand-nothing! (so the truth must be the other way around)” type of attitude explains some of it, I think.
How do you manage to preserve this authority sceptical, youthful way of looking at the world. In part a guess it has to do with adopting a way of experiencing the world where you work with – and are dazzled by! – “absolute quantities” … Ordinary people are not. I.e., Absolute infallible knowledge, Absolute, pure love, an Absolutely paradise-like way of organizing a society, perfect leaders (A future loving “World Kingdom”), etc. Shades fading away and compromises are seen as something bad.
The US/NATO countries/West have been & are themselves involved in a lot of (imperfect) shady business. Well. Hasn’t the U.S. invaded themselves? Didn’t Sweden ravaged Ukraine 500 years ago, etc…
This philosophy of perfection makes it more difficult (and “easier”, of course, in some way, although the result get grossly simplistic & wrong) to navigate the world, both in time and space.
How to be on the right side of history?
What does it mean to “be on the wrong side of history”? And what does it look like when you are? Is it the Left Party [former Communist party in Sweden] that does not want to agree to send weapons to Ukraine? Is it Putin & Co. who cannot accept that the surrounding world, the last thirty, forty, fifty? years have got a taste for things like freedom of opinion, reasonable democratic elections, “free movement”, etc.?
Is it they who advocate pacifism? Is it those who can come to no other conclusion than that Ukraine has every right to defend itself? I did unarmed service myself once. (The same winter-spring that Chernobyl exploded, by the way, and the debris swept in where we were & people couldn’t hunt and pick cloudberries.) I remember the interview before with a psychologist who tried to pressure me on how “peaceful” I really was. And I didn’t even have to lie. I just talk on from the new age spiritual world view, the ideals & the self-image I had at the time. (It was my late teens, and you’re the way you are. I was probably just a little more searching, idealistic, confused then most.)
But today I think such uncompromising pacifism is misguided. I don’t know if it’s “on the wrong side of history”, though? What “story”? The one you imagine will lead to a peaceful World Kingdom? And perhaps you want to imagine yourself as a kind of vanguard on the way there?
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who just spoke via link with the leaders of the European Union. He received a standing ovation.)