Cosmas and Damian, twin brothers who worked as physicians in modern day Turkey, in the third century, concocted medicinal salves and performed operations, gaining a wide following. When they converted to Christianity, Roman officials implored them to make a token offering to the gods so that they could continue their work. They refused and were beheaded. When several “miraculous” healings were performed in their names, they were elevated to sainthood and they are venerated in many parts of the Catholic world, including the United States.

The beautifully carved statues, so patiently visited throughout the day, were carefully lifted onto an ornate platform by members of the community. There was no machinery, no elaborate staging, simply many hands working together. Watching them, I was reminded that some traditions endure precisely because every generation quite literally helps carry them forward.

As the platform emerged from the church doors, the crowd fell remarkably quiet. Then, almost imperceptibly, the procession began to move slowly and deliberately. The physician saints were returning to their sanctuary, just as they had for generations.

I found myself walking among several thousand people, yet there was surprisingly little pushing, shoving, or commotion. People seemed less interested in reaching a destination than in participating in the journey itself, and that distinction stayed with me. Modern life often teaches us to focus on outcomes, but processions teach something different: Sometimes just walking is the point.

Throughout history, human beings have undertaken pilgrimages for countless reasons. Some seek healing; some offer gratitude; some fulfill promises made during difficult times. Others simply walk because those who came before them walked the same path. Each person’s reasons are deeply personal, yet for a few hours they become part of something larger than themselves.

As we moved through the streets, music accompanied the procession. A brass band played familiar melodies while voices rose from different parts of the crowd and church bells echoed across the hillsides. The sounds blended into an atmosphere that was at once festive and deeply reverent.

One of the aspects that interested me most was the diversity of those participating. There were local families who had attended the feast all their lives, but also pilgrims who had traveled long distances, as well as priests, volunteers, and visitors like us. Police officers helped maintain the flow of the crowd, and at the front of the procession, members of the Roma community gathered in a way that reflected their own longstanding relationship with the celebration. Those images have remained vivid in my memory. The procession was not simply a religious ritual; it was a meeting place of cultures, histories, and communities whose relationships stretched back centuries.

As psychologists, we often talk about identity as something individuals possess, but watching the procession reminded me that identity can also be communal. People often know who they are because they know where they belong, and radiations help answer that question.

One family particularly caught my attention. Three generations walked together as a grandmother held her granddaughter’s hand, and between them walked the child’s mother. No one seemed hurried, no one appeared distracted. The youngest member of the family learned the tradition simply by participating, since no formal lesson was necessary.

Culture is often taught through experience rather than explanation, and that simple realization made me think about another aspect of healing. Much has been written about the importance of social support during illness. Research consistently demonstrates that people facing adversity fare better when surrounded by caring relationships. Looking around me, I wondered whether gatherings such as this had always served that purpose, as here were thousands of people affirming that no one suffers alone. The saints may have stood at the center of the procession, but the community itself carried the healing tradition forward.

The walk through Riace became, in its own quiet way, an act of collective reassurance. You belong. You are remembered. Your hopes matter. Your struggles matter. We walk together. Those messages were never spoken aloud, and they didn’t need to be because symbols often communicate what words cannot.

One of the privileges of spending a lifetime studying religious experience has been discovering that rituals frequently operate on several levels at once. They are historical, psychological, social, and spiritual. Their meaning cannot always be reduced to a single explanation.

The procession through Riace was one such experience. Some participants undoubtedly believed the saints performed miracles, but others may have come primarily to honor family tradition. Some sought physical healing or emotional peace—or simply wished to be present. Remarkably, all found a place within the same event.

As the procession slowly approached the Sanctuary of Saints Cosma and Damian, daylight softened as the golden light of late afternoon settled over the hills, while candles flickered in the gathering dusk.

Then, from somewhere ahead, I heard another sound: a tambourine, then an accordion. The rhythm grew stronger, and the celebration was about to change once again. Waiting near the sanctuary was another community whose devotion expressed itself in a very different language, not through silent prayer but through music and dance.

Coming Next

Part Eight: Dancing Toward the Sacred

As the procession reached the sanctuary, tambourines, accordions, and ecstatic dancing filled the air. The Roma people welcomed the physician saints in a way unlike anything I had ever witnessed. Their celebration revealed another dimension of healing—one expressed not through words, but through rhythm, movement, and joy.

“The feast.”

No explanation seemed necessary about the feast because everyone knew what it meant. Each September, thousands of pilgrims make their way to the small town of Riace to honor Saints Cosma and Damian, two physician saints who have been revered in southern Italy for centuries. People come to offer thanks, pray for healing, fulfill vows, and simply be part of a tradition that stretches back through generations. Our contacts encouraged us not merely to observe the celebration, but to experience it, and nothing could have prepared me for what we encountered.

Riace is ordinarily a quiet hill town overlooking the Ionian Sea. Narrow streets wind between centuries-old stone buildings, and life moves at an unhurried pace. But during the feast, the town awakens.

As we approached, traffic slowed long before we reached the center of town. Families walked together carrying flowers. Elderly couples climbed the hills with remarkable determination. Vendors lined the streets selling religious medals, candles, icons, and small wax replicas of just about every imaginable part of the human body: hands, feet, eyes, arms, legs, hearts. Even tiny infants. These wax figures, known as ex voto, represented prayers already answered—or prayers still waiting to be answered. Someone recovering from an injured hand might leave a wax hand in gratitude. A family praying for a loved one’s heart condition might offer a small wax heart. The symbolism was immediately understood. Healing had become visible.

As we entered the Church of San Nicola di Bari, another surprise awaited us. The entire interior had been transformed. Brightly colored decorative paper covered arches, columns, and ceilings in elaborate patterns that seemed almost festive enough for a wedding. Candles flickered throughout the sanctuary. The fragrance of incense drifted quietly through the air while parishioners moved patiently toward the front of the church. There was no rush; people waited their turn with quiet reverence.

Near the altar stood the beautifully adorned statues of Saints Cosma and Damian. One by one, worshippers approached them. Some paused silently in prayer, while others gently touched the platform supporting the statues. Parents lifted small children so they, too, could receive a blessing. Others carefully placed their ex voto offerings near the saints as visible expressions of gratitude, hope, or faith.

Watching these quiet moments affected me more deeply than I had expected. As psychologists, we often study belief by asking questions, administering surveys, or conducting interviews, yet there are moments when observation reveals far more than words. No questionnaire could fully capture what I saw on the faces of those approaching the saints. Some appeared joyful, while others were visibly burdened. Some smiled, but others wiped away tears. Some pilgrims lingered only a few seconds, while others remained motionless for several minutes. Every face told a different story, yet together they formed a remarkable portrait of one universal human experience: hope.

Whatever else one believes about prayer or miracles, hope possesses extraordinary psychological power. Hope allows people to endure uncertainty. Hope gives meaning to suffering. Hope encourages perseverance when answers remain elusive. As I watched the steady procession of pilgrims, I found myself thinking that perhaps one of religion’s greatest gifts has always been its ability to sustain hope. That realization did not require me to explain every reported miracle, nor did it require skepticism. My role was not to judge anyone’s faith; it was to understand what that faith meant to those who lived. An elderly woman caught my attention. She approached slowly using a cane, and when she reached the saints, she rested one hand gently on the platform before bowing her head and remaining there for nearly a minute. There were no words or dramatic gestures, simply stillness. Then she smiled softly, crossed herself, and returned to her family. I have no idea what she prayed for, nor do I know whether she believed her prayer had already been answered. Some moments are complete without explanation.

Throughout my career, I have learned that healing is not always synonymous with curing. Medicine typically seeks to eliminate disease, but healing sometimes means finding peace despite disease, and the pilgrims who filled that church reminded me of this distinction. Many undoubtedly hoped for physical recovery, while others may have come seeking courage, forgiveness, comfort, strength, or simply the reassurance that they were not facing life’s uncertainties alone.

By late afternoon the church had grown even more crowded; outside, music echoed through the streets. The statues of Saints Cosma and Damian would soon leave the sanctuary for their annual procession through Riace. Thousands of people were gathering; the atmosphere had begun to change, and quiet prayer was giving way to celebration. The feast was about to spill from the church into the streets, and with it, an entire community would begin telling its story. As evening approached, the statues of Saints Cosma and Damian were lifted onto the shoulders of waiting volunteers and carried through the streets of Riace. Thousands followed. Some came in gratitude. Others came seeking healing. For a few unforgettable hours, the entire town became a moving expression of faith, memory, and community.

Coming Next

Part Seven: The Healing Saints

The answer surprised me.

There was no central school of folk medicine, no formal certification, and no governing body. Instead, the knowledge lived within families and communities passed quietly from one generation to the next. Some individuals, however, became especially respected for their wisdom and experience, and people sought them out when ordinary home remedies proved insufficient. These were Calabria’s traditional healers.

Many were women. Some possessed extensive knowledge of medicinal herbs. Others were known for prayers or rituals. Some combined practical treatments with deeply rooted religious traditions. Their understanding of healing was not divided into separate categories of medicine, psychology, and spirituality. To them, these were simply different dimensions of caring for another human being.

I was reminded once again how modern language can sometimes obscure older ways of thinking. Today we often distinguish between physical illness and emotional distress. We separate physicians from psychologists, clergy from counselors, pharmacists from nutritionists. In traditional communities those distinctions are often far less rigid. A healer might prepare an herbal remedy while offering reassurance. A prayer might calm an anxious family. A ritual could restore hope to someone who had begun to despair. Whether each intervention worked through chemistry, psychology, spirituality—or some combination of all three—was often less important than the experience of being cared for.

Throughout my career, I have been struck by a simple observation: People rarely seek healing only because they are sick. They seek healing because they are suffering and those are not always the same thing.

Modern medicine has become remarkably effective at treating disease. Yet illness often brings fear, loneliness, uncertainty, grief, and questions that no prescription alone can answer, and Traditional healers have long recognized this reality. They treat people, not merely symptoms One aspect of Calabrian healing particularly interested me: No one we met described these practitioners as miracle workers. On the contrary, they were usually spoken of with quiet respect. “They know.” “She learned it from her mother.” “People have always gone to her.” These were the kinds of comments we heard. Authority rested not on titles or credentials but on trust earned over many years.

That pattern reminded me of Indigenous healers I had met in other parts of the world. Whether I was speaking with Native American elders, South American shamans, or practitioners in other traditional cultures, one characteristic appeared again and again: Healing depended upon relationship. The healer knew the patient, the patient’s family, their history, their fears, their community. Healing was personal because life itself was personal.

As psychologists, we sometimes underestimate the therapeutic value of simply being deeply known by another human being. One afternoon, I found myself thinking about something I had witnessed many times before. A visitor would arrive seeking advice and the conversation might continue for an hour. Perhaps herbs would be recommended. Perhaps prayers. Perhaps both.

Yet much of the encounter consisted simply of listening that was careful and compassionate--listening without hurry.

It occurred to me that modern psychotherapy, despite its scientific foundations, shares something important with these much older traditions: Before healing can begin, someone must first feel heard and that realization became one of the quiet lessons of our journey.

There was another feature of Calabrian folk healing that impressed me: Humility. The practitioners we learned about rarely claimed exclusive authority. They did not suggest abandoning physicians, nor did they insist that every illness had a traditional remedy. Instead, folk healing existed alongside contemporary medicine. Families might consult a physician for one problem while continuing to rely on longstanding family practices for another and there seemed to be remarkably little conflict between these approaches-- perhaps because they answered different kinds of questions. One addressed disease. The other addressed meaning.

One afternoon I asked myself why these traditions had survived despite enormous advances in medical science. The answer, I believe, lies not in pharmacology but in human nature. Every culture seeks ways to transform fear into hope, uncertainty into reassurance, and isolation into community.

Traditional healers have served those needs for countless generations and modern healthcare continues to grapple with them today.

As our expedition progressed, I became increasingly convinced that the true significance of Calabrian folk healing was not whether every remedy proved scientifically effective. Its deeper significance was cultural, reminding people that healing is not merely something one receives. It is something a community does together.

The weeks passed quickly. Then came an event unlike anything we had yet experienced. The quiet conversations around kitchen tables gave way to music echoing through narrow streets. Pilgrims began arriving from distant towns. Churches were filled with flowers, candles, and prayer. Something extraordinary was about to begin.

The annual Feast of Saints Cosma and Damian had arrived.

Coming Next

Part Six: Riace Awakens

Every September, the quiet town of Riace is transformed. Pilgrims arrive by the thousands. Candles flicker beneath centuries-old icons. Music fills the streets. We soon realized we were about to witness far more than a religious festival—it was a living expression of how an entire community understands healing, gratitude, and hope.

There was one subject that seemed to change the atmosphere whenever it arose. Conversations that had been animated suddenly became more cautious. People lowered their voices. Some smiled awkwardly. Others glanced around the room before answering. A few preferred not to discuss the topic at all. The subject was malocchio—the Evil Eye.

Long before arriving in Calabria, I had encountered belief in the Evil Eye in many cultures. Variations of the tradition exist throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Latin America, parts of Asia, and elsewhere. Although the details differ from place to place, the central idea remains remarkably consistent. It is the belief that another person’s envy, jealousy, or malicious intent can bring misfortune, illness, or suffering.

To many modern readers, that may sound like little more than superstition. Yet beliefs that endure for thousands of years deserve more than a dismissive shrug. As a psychologist, I have learned that when millions of people, across vastly different cultures, preserve the same basic belief generation after generation, there is usually something important to understand—even if the explanation ultimately lies more in psychology than in the supernatural.

One afternoon, while speaking with local residents, we asked whether people still believed in malocchio. The answer surprised us. No one laughed. No one dismissed the question. Instead, people answered thoughtfully. Yes, they said. Some still believed in the Evil Eye. Others were less certain, but nearly everyone knew someone who took the Evil Eye seriously.

One woman explained that malocchio was not always intentional. It could be a jealous glance, an envious thought, or even excessive admiration, if left unaccompanied by a blessing, all of which might inadvertently bring harm.

That distinction fascinated me. The Evil Eye was not simply about evil people; it reflected an awareness of the emotional power of envy itself, as human beings have always struggled with envy. Every society must somehow manage the tensions created when one person prospers while another suffers. Perhaps beliefs such as malocchio represent one cultural way of acknowledging those powerful emotions. Whether literally true or not, they remind people that envy has consequences, so in that sense, the tradition performs an important social function.

Several people described methods for recognizing the Evil Eye. One method involved placing drops of olive oil into a bowl of water. If the droplets behaved in a particular way, the diagnosis was confirmed. Others spoke of prayers known only to certain individuals, and still others described rituals involving blessed objects, salt, or olive leaves. These practices had often been passed from one generation to the next, but sometimes only mothers instructed daughters, and sometimes the prayers were transmitted only on Christmas Eve or another sacred occasion. This knowledge itself was treated almost as a sacred inheritance.

What interested me most, however, was not the ritual itself; it was the confidence people placed in the person performing it. Throughout my career, I have observed that healing relationships often depend upon trust. Whether one consults a physician, psychologist, clergy member, or traditional healer, confidence in the practitioner can profoundly influence the experience itself. Modern research increasingly recognizes that expectation, hope, reassurance, and the therapeutic relationship can affect outcomes in meaningful ways. Traditional cultures discovered those truths long before psychologists developed names for them.

Of course, there were also darker aspects to the belief. If someone were suspected of causing malocchio, that accusation could damage reputations or strain relationships within a village. Several people hinted that accusations were made cautiously, if at all. No one wanted to become known as someone capable of casting the Evil Eye. It reminded me that every belief system has the potential to heal—or to harm—depending upon how it is used, and that realization has stayed with me throughout my career.

As psychologists, we sometimes ask whether beliefs are objectively accurate. Equally important, however, is another question: How do beliefs shape the way people live? This is the focus of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and similar systems.

The belief in malocchio encourages humility, and it discourages boasting. It reminds people to temper praise with blessings. It acknowledges that emotions like envy and resentment can quietly influence human relationships. Even those who no longer accepted the tradition literally often continued to observe its customs. Old habits linger, old symbols endure, and old stories continue to speak.

By the end of our stay, I realized that I had stopped thinking about the Evil Eye primarily as folklore. Instead, I had begun seeing it as a window into the emotional life of a culture. Its language was symbolic. And its concerns were profoundly human, encompassing fear, jealousy, protection, compassion, and community. Those themes are hardly unique to Calabria, as every society develops its own symbols for expressing them. Calabria’s happened to include the Evil Eye.

I also recalled that the biologist Rapert Sheldrake had conducted experiments on “the sense of being stared at.” More often than not, experimental participants could tell whether a distant person was staring at them. Perhaps the Evil Eye is a bit more than mere superstition.

As our conversations continued, we discovered that not everyone who addressed these beliefs was simply an ordinary member of the community. Some individuals held a unique place within village life as they possessed extensive knowledge of herbs, rituals, prayers, and traditional healing practices. People sought them out when ordinary remedies were no longer enough because these were Calabria’s folk healers. Meeting them would become one of the most fascinating experiences of our journey.

Coming Next

Part Five: The Folk Healers

Some were known for their knowledge of herbs. Others for prayers, rituals, or seemingly intuitive abilities. They did not resemble physicians, yet generations of families sought their help. Who were Calabria’s traditional healers, and what can they teach us about the nature of healing itself?

This chapter tries to capture that spirit.

One lesson has stayed with me throughout my career: if you really want to understand a culture, don’t begin with its theories. Begin with its people.

Some of the most meaningful conversations I’ve ever had didn’t take place in universities, hospitals, or conference halls. They happened around kitchen tables, where people felt comfortable enough to share stories they might never reveal in a formal interview.

Calabria was no exception.

Thanks to Roberto Galante’s friendships and knowledge of the area, doors opened to us that would have remained firmly closed to strangers. We didn’t arrive as investigators. We were welcomed as guests.

Hospitality came first. Research came later.

One afternoon, we were invited into the home of Pasquale and his wife, Giuseppina. Their daughter Rosa joined us, and it wasn’t long before coffee appeared, followed by homemade pastries, lively conversation, and the kind of warmth that immediately puts a visitor at ease.

There were no prepared lectures or rehearsed presentations—just people sharing what they had learned from those who came before them.

As we talked, I realized that Giuseppina possessed an impressive knowledge of traditional remedies. She never called herself a healer or claimed to be an expert. She simply spoke about treatments that families had once known and used—knowledge passed from mothers to daughters, from neighbor to neighbor, and from one generation to the next.

There was nothing mysterious about it. This was simply part of growing up.

If a child developed a cough, there was a remedy. If someone had a stomachache, there were herbs to prepare. Cuts, burns, headaches, bronchitis, digestive problems—each had its own traditional treatment, often made from ingredients gathered in nearby gardens, orchards, or hillsides.

Olive leaves. Chamomile. Cherry stems. Flax seeds. Salt. Olive oil.

Simple things.

What fascinated me was not whether every remedy would withstand scientific scrutiny. Modern medicine has developed rigorous ways of evaluating treatments, and rightly so. What interested me was how generations of families had accumulated this practical knowledge in the first place.

Some remedies undoubtedly worked because of the medicinal properties of the plants themselves. Others may have provided comfort through ritual, expectation, or the reassuring presence of a trusted family member. Many probably combined all of these elements.

From a psychological perspective, it isn’t always easy to separate those influences. Nor is it always necessary.

Healing has rarely been only about chemistry.

As the afternoon went on, I noticed something else. Giuseppina never spoke about healing as an individual accomplishment. She didn’t suggest that she possessed unusual powers. The knowledge belonged to the community.

Everyone had a part to play. Older women remembered the recipes. Family members cared for one another. Neighbors shared advice. The responsibility for healing was distributed throughout the community rather than concentrated in the hands of specialists.

This reminded me of many Indigenous cultures I had visited in other parts of the world. The particular customs and rituals varied enormously, but the underlying principle was often remarkably similar.

Healing was a relationship.

It was not simply a relationship between practitioner and patient. It existed between people, generations, families, and the natural world.

The more we listened, the more I realized that we were encountering something increasingly rare in modern society. Today, information is everywhere. We can search the internet and receive an answer in seconds.

But information is not the same as wisdom.

Wisdom requires context. It requires experience. It requires someone saying, “This is how my mother taught me,” or “This is what my grandmother always did.”

Knowledge passed along in that way carries more than instructions. It carries identity.

As psychologists, we often talk about narrative—the stories people tell about themselves and their lives. Sitting in that Calabrian home, I was reminded that communities also have narratives. These traditional remedies were not merely isolated techniques. They were chapters in a much larger story about family, continuity, and belonging.

I was also struck by how little distinction people seemed to make between caring for the body and caring for the spirit. A practical remedy might be accompanied by a prayer. A medicinal herb might be gathered with reverence. Faith and medicine were not treated as competing explanations. They simply belonged together.

Western society often asks us to choose between science and spirituality. The people we met in Calabria seemed to feel no need to make that choice. For them, the two could exist quite comfortably side by side.

Looking back more than twenty years later, I no longer remember every remedy Giuseppina described. What I remember is her generosity. I remember the laughter around the table. I remember how naturally these traditions were discussed—not as quaint folklore or artifacts preserved in a museum, but as ordinary parts of everyday life.

Above all, I remember realizing that we had encountered something far more valuable than a catalog of herbal treatments.

We were witnessing the survival of cultural memory.

But that memory had another dimension.

As our conversations deepened, people would occasionally lower their voices. Some subjects were discussed openly. Others were approached more cautiously.

One belief in particular still commanded both respect and apprehension.

Throughout Calabria, it was known as malocchio—

the Evil Eye.

Coming Next

Part Four: The Evil Eye

Nearly everyone knew about it. Few people wanted to discuss it openly. Yet throughout Calabria we discovered that the belief in malocchio—the Evil Eye—continued to shape everyday life in subtle but powerful ways. As psychologists, how should we understand a belief that has endured for thousands of years?

One of the first things that struck me about Calabria was its landscape. Maps identify it as the southern tip of Italy, but maps cannot convey its character. Calabria is a land of steep mountains, rocky coastlines, winding roads, and villages that seem almost suspended between sea and sky. Even today, many communities feel surprisingly isolated despite being only a short distance from modern cities.

As our group traveled through the region, I began to understand why so many ancient customs had survived here long after disappearing elsewhere in Europe. Isolation can be an extraordinary conservator of culture.

For centuries, ideas that swept across much of Europe arrived slowly in Calabria, if they arrived at all. Families remained in the same villages for generations. Knowledge was passed from parents to children not through books, but through conversation, observation, and experience. Traditions became woven into daily life. For someone interested in indigenous psychologies, it was a remarkable place to visit.

Calabria has witnessed nearly every chapter of Mediterranean history. Greeks established flourishing colonies here more than two thousand years ago. Romans followed. Then came Byzantines, Normans, Spaniards, Bourbons, and many others. Each civilization left its mark, adding another layer to an already rich cultural landscape. Yet despite centuries of conquest, something remarkably persistent remained. The people.

Again and again, we encountered families whose identities seemed rooted less in governments or empires than in the villages where their ancestors had lived for centuries. History had changed the rulers, but not necessarily the rhythms of everyday life.

There was another reason Calabria fascinated us. Throughout my career I had learned that healing traditions often flourish in places where communities have had to depend upon one another. Before physicians became widely available, families relied on local knowledge. Herbs were gathered from nearby hillsides. Midwives attended births. Older women became repositories of medicinal knowledge. Religious rituals offered comfort when little else could be done. Healing was not a profession. It was part of community life.

As we drove through the countryside, Roberto Galante often pointed out features we might otherwise have overlooked. An ancient church tucked into a hillside. The ruins of a Greek settlement. A shrine that local people still visited. His familiarity with the region transformed every drive into an informal lesson in Calabrian history and culture.

Equally important, Roberto introduced us not simply to places, but to people. That distinction proved invaluable. Researchers sometimes arrive with questionnaires and clipboards, hoping to collect information efficiently. We discovered that Calabria required a different approach. Conversations unfolded gradually. Trust developed over shared meals, cups of espresso, and stories exchanged around kitchen tables. No one hurried. In retrospect, I suspect that was one of the expedition’s greatest gifts.

Slowing down allowed us to observe details that might otherwise have escaped notice. Laundry hanging between stone buildings. Olive groves that families had tended for generations. Small roadside shrines where passing motorists still paused to make the sign of the cross. Fresh bread carried home under someone’s arm. Church bells quietly marking the hours.

None of these things were extraordinary by themselves. Together, however, they revealed a community whose sense of time differed noticeably from the hurried pace familiar to many visitors.

One afternoon, while walking through a village, I realized something that would stay with me throughout the journey. Modern society often separates life into categories. Religion belongs in churches. Medicine belongs in clinics. Psychology belongs in universities. Folklore belongs in museums. In Calabria, those boundaries seemed far less distinct. A medicinal herb might also carry religious significance. A prayer might accompany a physical remedy. A healing ritual could involve family members, neighbors, saints, and local plants—all participating in what was understood as a single process.

To an outsider, these practices might appear contradictory. To the people who lived there, they formed a coherent worldview.

As psychologists, it is tempting to ask whether a particular belief is objectively true or false. My own work has taught me that an equally important question is different: What role does this belief play in people’s lives? That question would accompany us throughout our stay.

The answers rarely came quickly. Sometimes they emerged only after hours of conversation. Sometimes they appeared unexpectedly in a passing remark. Occasionally they were communicated without words at all—in gestures, rituals, or expressions that revealed how deeply these traditions remained embedded within everyday life. By now we had become convinced that Calabria’s healing practices were not relics preserved for tourists or scholars. They were still alive. Not everywhere. Not in every family. But very much alive.

Our first real glimpse into that living tradition came not in a church or public ceremony, but around an ordinary family kitchen table. There, over coffee and generous hospitality, we met people who had inherited generations of healing knowledge—not from textbooks, but from their mothers and grandmothers. It was there that our real education began.

Coming Next

Part Three: Learning Around the Kitchen Table

An elderly Calabrian couple welcomed us into their home with coffee, conversation, and stories. What began as a friendly visit became one of the most memorable lessons of the entire expedition, revealing how centuries of healing knowledge continue to survive—not in libraries, but in families.

Part One: Why Calabria?

Editor’s Note: In 2003, Stanley Krippner traveled through Calabria, Italy, with fellow researchers Michael Bova, Roberto Galante, and Ashwin Budden to document one of Europe’s oldest surviving indigenous healing traditions. This series revisits that journey through Stanley’s personal recollections, field notes, and reflections more than twenty years later.

After more than six decades studying dreams, shamanism, and Indigenous healing traditions around the world, people occasionally ask what first drew me to these subjects. The answer isn’t a single book, mentor, or defining moment. Rather, it has been a lifelong curiosity about one enduring question: How have different cultures approached the topic of healing?

Modern medicine has achieved extraordinary things. It has extended life expectancy, conquered diseases that once devastated populations, and transformed emergency care. Yet wherever I traveled, I discovered that healing meant much more than treating illness. It involved stories, rituals, symbols, relationships, music, faith, and community. Every culture seemed to possess its own understanding of what restores balance when life becomes disrupted.

Over the years, that curiosity carried me into conversations with shamans in South America, Asia, and Africa, Indigenous healers in North America, dream practitioners, as well as psychotherapists, physicians, and scholars from many different traditions. Again and again, I found that people often experienced healing in ways that could not be fully explained by conventional medicine alone. Whether those experiences were understood through psychology, spiritual orientations, cultural frameworks, or the placebo response, they deserved careful observation rather than quick dismissal.

That curiosity eventually led me to one of Europe’s least understood regions.

Calabria occupies the southern tip of Italy—the “toe” of the country’s familiar boot-shaped peninsula. Although millions of tourists visit Rome, Florence, Venice, and Tuscany each year, relatively few venture into Calabria’s rugged mountains and isolated villages. For centuries, its geography helped preserve traditions that had disappeared elsewhere in Europe.

I had long heard that ancient healing customs still survived there and in 2003, an opportunity arose to see them for myself.

I was joined by three incredible colleagues whose knowledge and friendship made the expedition far richer than anything I could have accomplished alone. Michael Bova brought both scholarly curiosity and artistic sensitivity to our work. Roberto Galante, a native Italian with deep knowledge of Calabrian culture, opened doors that would otherwise have remained closed to us. Ashwin Budden’s psychological knowledge contributed a thoughtful perspective that often led our conversations in unexpected directions.

Michael Bova, who had been a member of our Maimonides Medical Center Dream Laboratory research team in he 1960s, was essential to this project. Of Italian descent, several of Bova’s distant relatives lived in Calabria and so he was able to pay them a long-delayed visit as they facilitated our inquiry.

None of us arrived expecting to “discover” forgotten secrets. Instead, we hoped to listen respectfully, observe carefully, and learn how people themselves understood healing within their own cultural traditions.

As psychologists and researchers, we knew that indigenous knowledge is often transmitted not through books or universities, but through families. It survives because grandparents teach grandchildren, neighbors share remedies, and communities preserve rituals that continue to carry meaning across generations.

However, that type of knowledge is remarkably fragile.

When modernization reaches an isolated community, traditions can disappear within a single generation. A healing ritual practiced for five hundred years may quietly fade away when the last person who remembers it dies.

Calabria, however, appeared to have resisted that process longer than most places in Europe.

As our plane descended toward southern Italy, I found myself wondering what we would actually encounter. Would these traditions still be living practices, or merely stories remembered by elderly villagers? Had modern medicine replaced them entirely? Or had the old beliefs somehow found ways to coexist alongside contemporary healthcare?

Like every worthwhile field expedition, we arrived carrying more questions than answers and those questions only multiplied as we began exploring Calabria’s villages.

The landscape itself hinted that we had entered a different world. Mountain roads twisted through ancient settlements perched high above the sea. Stone houses clung to hillsides where generations of families had lived for centuries. Church bells echoed through narrow streets, and conversations drifted from open windows in a dialect unfamiliar even to many Italians.

There was an unmistakable feeling that time moved differently here.

Within days we found ourselves welcomed into people’s homes. Coffee appeared almost immediately after introductions. Conversations unfolded slowly, often lasting hours. We learned that hospitality in Calabria wasn’t simply good manners—it was part of the culture itself.

Before long we realized that many families still possessed extensive knowledge of traditional remedies, herbal medicines, religious rituals, and beliefs that had been handed down through generations.

Some of these practices seemed practical. Others were deeply symbolic. Some blurred the distinction between medicine, religion, and folklore so completely that separating them no longer made sense.

It soon became clear that we had not come merely to study a collection of folk remedies. We had entered a living tradition—one in which healing was understood as something that engaged the body, the mind, the family, and the sacred all at once.

Over the following weeks we would meet remarkable people, witness extraordinary religious celebrations, hear stories of remarkable recoveries, and encounter beliefs that have endured for centuries despite enormous social change.

Our journey into Calabria had only just begun.

And it would challenge many of our assumptions about what healing truly means.

Coming Next

Part 2: A Land Time Nearly Forgot

Heidi Rimke, in this refreshingly perceptive book, explores the multifaceted ways in which concepts of the afterlife can be woven into the fabric of therapy, self-help, and broader cultural narratives. Rimke argues that spirituality-informed therapy is not merely about symptom relief; it is deeply rooted in existential reassurance, especially regarding questions of life’s purpose and what lies beyond death. In a society marked by secularization and fragmentation of traditional religious structures, this type of therapy emerges as a new locus for spiritual exploration.

Rimke points out that spirituality, as encountered in therapeutic culture, is distinct from organized religion. It is highly individualized, eclectic, and experiential. Clients may draw from a range of traditions—Buddhist mindfulness, Christian forgiveness, New Age energy work, Indigenous healing rituals—constructing personal spiritual repertoires that speak to their unique needs and histories.

Therapists, recognizing the therapeutic potential of spiritual beliefs, often encourage this eclecticism. Practices such as guided visualization, meditation, and regression therapy allow for an integration of spiritual themes. The therapeutic setting can become a sacred space, where individuals confront existential fears, cultivate hope, and craft meaning around suffering and loss.

Perhaps one of the most profound spiritual themes in therapeutic culture is the idea of the afterlife. Rimke’s research reveals that, even in secular societies, individuals continue to grapple with questions of mortality and what comes after. Death, once the domain of religious authorities, is now frequently discussed in therapy as a psychological and spiritual threshold.

Therapists may invite clients to articulate their own beliefs about the afterlife, whether those are rooted in religious doctrine, personal experience, or cultural mythos. For some, the afterlife is a place of reunion, where lost loved ones are encountered again. For others, it is a metaphorical return to the cosmos, a dissolution into universal energy.

Rimke notes that these beliefs serve important psychological functions. They help clients process grief, assuage anxiety about death, and find closure after loss. Rituals such as writing letters to the deceased, participating in memorial ceremonies, or engaging in imaginative dialogues, including those involving after-death communications, can facilitate ongoing bonds with those who have passed, blurring the lines between life and afterlife.

Heidi Rimke’s scholarship draws upon numerous case studies illustrating the creative integration of spirituality and afterlife concepts in therapy. For example, she describes individuals who, facing terminal illness, find solace in beliefs about reincarnation or spiritual continuity. Others, mourning the loss of a child or partner, use imaginative dialogue and ritual to maintain bonds, experiencing healing in the process.

In each case, Rimke observes that spirituality is not monolithic. It adapts to personal histories, cultural contexts, and shifting existential concerns. The therapeutic space becomes a crucible for spiritual experimentation—a place where the boundaries of life and death, presence and absence, are continually negotiated.

In the words of Rimke, “Spirituality and the afterlife are not just answers to existential questions—they are living practices, woven into the daily act of becoming.” As therapeutic culture continues to evolve, these themes will remain central, offering guidance and comfort across the thresholds of life and death.

The Author

Professor Heidi Marie Rimke, PhD, teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of Winnipeg. She specializes in qualitative health research, the sociology of religion and spirituality, the human sciences, and cultural studies. She is widely published and recognized for her interdisciplinary scholarship on the social dimensions of illness, criminality, public health, and therapeutic cultures.

Allen was a prolific writer who also championed gay rights and anti-war movements, as well as coining the phrase “Flower Power.” Despite this countercultural stance, he became recognized as one of American’s foremost writers and artistic icons.

Early Life

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in the city of Paterson. His mother, Naomi, had immigrated from Russia to the United States while his father, Louis, was a poet and teacher. Allen began keeping a journal at an early age, took to the poetry of Walt Whitman, and attended Columbia University, where he met Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, who would all become literary icons. Allen started to focus on his writing during the mid-1940s, while also exploring his attraction to men.

Writing ‘Howl’

Allen graduated from Columbia in 1948, but in the following year was involved as an accomplice in a robbery. To avoid jail time, he pleaded insanity, spending time in the university’s mental health facility. He then started to study under poet William Carlos Williams while working at a Manhattan advertising agency.

In 1954, Allen moved to San Francisco and became part of the countercultural coterie that became the “Beat Movement.” Its members used a number of artistic modes to circumvent what they saw as rigid and stultifying rules of society. It was also in the Bay Area where Ginsberg met model Peter Orlovsky, who would become his lifelong companion.

In 1955, Allen gave the first public reading of his poem “Howl,” which became a manifesto of the Beat Generation and was published the following year by City Lights Bookstore. “Howl” was an eye-opening work in its explorations of sexuality, anguish, and social protest in a non-traditional freewheeling literary form. Allen was tried for “obscenity,” but he was vindicated once the presiding judge ruled the work had merit. The resulting publicity placed Allen and his work in the spotlight and as paragons of anti-censorship.

Growing Influence

Allen’s next published work, Kaddish and Other Poems 1958-1960, featured the poem ‘’Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg,’‘ which explored his mother’s past and his feelings about their relationship. It is regarded by many as one of his strongest, most affecting works.

During the 1960s, Allen’s published titles included Reality Sandwiches and Planet News, and he also worked with musicians such as Philip Glass and Bono. Allen used the phrase “flower power,” to describe the peace movements that fueled many of the demonstrations in which he engaged, including the protests against the Vietnam War.

Allen was an advocate of marijuana, having been introduced to it by Louis Armstrong, the jazz musician, although he would walk away from it after he studied yoga and meditation during a 1962 voyage to India. Allen later converted to Buddhism and founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, where he taught for several years. He was a world traveler, living for extended periods of time in various parts of Latin America and Europe.

Honors and Awards

Allen won the 1974 National Book Award for his work, The Fall of America: Poems of these States 1965-1971, and over the ensuing years, became increasingly renowned for the importance and influence of his work, receiving accolades such as the Robert Front Medal in 1986. He became a Gugenheim Foundation Fellow in 1997, and the accolade compared him to Walt Whitman, his youthful idol.

He died shortly after on April 5, 1997, in his East Village loft, surrounded by friends and old lovers. He was 70 years old. A massive collection of his work can be found in the book Collected Poems 1947-1997.

Personal Reflections

Allen was very gracious whenever I introduced him to friends of mine, and when I gave a student-initiated course at New York University he accepted my invitation to speak to the students, even though there were only two dozen young women and men. He brought along another prominent Beat poet, Gregory Corso, and they regaled the students with anecdotes and answered questions about the creative process.

In January 1968, my wife and I attended the recently completed Felt Forum of Madison Square Garden for a standing-room-only appearance of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. His genial countenance complemented the cushions on which he was sitting, bedecked by dozens of floral bouquets. For nearly an hour, he declaimed about such Vedic concepts as the importance of “creative intelligence.”

Following the Maharishi’s presentation, we spoke with Allen who said he found meditation superior to drugs in imparting wisdom. In December 1976, Allen and I were both invited to a reception for His Holiness the 16^th Gwala Karmapa, head of the Kargu Order of Tibetan Buddhism.

Of course, Allen had a lighter side. In October, 1968, a friend of mine and I attended The Living Theater’s production of “Paradise Now,” an anarchist semi-participatory production during which cast members would challenge members of the audience with such questions as “Why can’t I travel without a passport?”, and “Why can’t I take my clothes off in public places?” Actors asked these questions to several audience members and when one came to Allen, he immediately took off all his clothes, providing a dramatic conclusion to the show.

Manuel has “paid his dues,” having spent about four decades immersing himself in the Amazonian rainforests, gaining an understanding of shamanism and ayahuasca that is most likely unparalleled by other psychologists. I wish that my co-author Adam Rock and I had been able to benefit from his wisdom when we authored our book about shamanism in 2011. Nonetheless, we were able to cite some of the field research conducted by Michael Winkelman, who has done considerable field research, especially in the Brazilian rainforest. I have used Winkelman’s cross-cultural research data to differentiate shamans from such practitioners as mediums, priests, sorcerers, and witches – acknowledging that there is no sharply divided line among these categories. However, Winkelman’s projects have helped me to try to honor Galileo’s advice to first “measure what is measurable,” and then “attempt to measure what has been thought to have been immeasurable.” There are no dividing lines in Nature; when humans attempt to establish dividing lines among the categories they construct, something invariably gets left out.

Manuel understands the parameters of TIM and how it differs radically from Western medicine and Western psychotherapy. He provides in-depth descriptions of topics rarely mentioned by other authors, such as the role of malevolent “spirits,” the importance of touch during shamanic rituals, and the shamanic concepts of life and death. The role of the ayahuasca Icaros, or sacred songs, is described so well that I will never hear them the same way again.

Manuel has distilled both his “first person” and “third person” experiences and studies into an innovative school, “The Oxigeme Process.” In contrast to weekend and even months-long programs, the Oxigeme Process is intensive, its two “cycles” extending over the years. The Oxigeme curriculum emphasizes the study of traditional indigenous wisdom that emphasizes the means to heal. It is a holistic program as “The whole is far greater than the sum of the parts. “

Manuel emphasizes the “dissipative” aspects of his curriculum, using a term coined by the Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine to describe systems that do not follow the conventional laws of thermodynamics. He provides such examples as tornados, and hurricanes that appear to be “self-organizing,” a central concept in chaos and complexity theory.

In psychotherapy, chaos and complexity theory have sometimes been applied in the form of family therapy. Focusing on each family member separately obscures the way in which the total family system functions. This has major implications for preventing destructive behavior because interviews with separate family members might not reveal family dynamics and how they affect a particular family member’s irrational decisions based on what I would call “dysfunctional personal myths.” However, an adept family therapist, watching the entire family interacting, may perceive patterns that reveal unspoken rules and habits.

Readers who wend their way through this labyrinth will reap many rewards, among them a deeper understanding of a remarkable worldview. Manuel does not romanticize shamanism or claim that ayahuasca is a placebo. He points out the all-too-frequent failings of the former and the hazards of the latter. But at the end of the day (or night), Manuel has provided an unforgettable panoply, a tapestry of many colors, many textures, and multiple hues. Thank you, gracias, Obrigado, Manuel!

REFERENCES
Barušs, I., & Mossbridge, J. (2017). Transcendent mind: Rethinking the science of consciousness. American Psychological Association.

Campbell. J. (1961). Oriental mythology. Viking Press.

Eliade, M. (1964). Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. Princeton University Press. (Originally published in French, 1951).

Fadiman, J. (2011). The psychedelic explorer’s guide: Safe therapeutic and sacred journeys. Park Street Press.

Krippner, S. (1985). Psychedelic drugs and creativity. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 17, 235-245. Krippner, S. (2002). Conflicting perspectives on shamans and shamanism: Points and counterpoints. American Psychologist, 57, 962-977

Krippner, S. (2004). Conflicting perspectives on shamanism and shamans: Points and counterpoints. In D. A. Funk et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Interdisciplinary Scientific and Practical Congress, Moscow, June 21-30, 2004 (pp. 81-96). Moscow: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology.

Krippner, S., & Barrett, D. (2019). Transgenerational trauma: The role of epigenetics. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 40, 53-62.

Krippner, S., & Sulla, J. (2000). Identifying spiritual content in reports from ayahuasca sessions. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 19, 59-76.

Krippner, S., Joffe Ellis, D., Paulson, D., & Riebel, L. (2021). Understanding suicide’s allure: Steps to save lives by healing psychological scars. Praeger.

Lynn, S. J., & Rhue, J. W. (1988). Fantasy proneness: Hypnosis, developmental antecedents, and psychopathology. American Psychologist, 43, 35-44

McGovern, W. M. (1927), Jungle paths and Inca ruins: Our exploration of the upper Amazon. Gosset & Dunlap.

McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the Gods: The search for the original tree of knowledge: A radical history of plants, drugs, and human evolution. Bantam.

Narby, J. (1998). The cosmic serpent: DNA and the origins of knowledge. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.

Narby, J., & Huxley, F. (2001). Shamans through time: 500 years on the path to knowledge. Thames & Hudson.

Prigogine, I. (1980). From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. W. H. Freeman and Company.

Rock, A., & Krippner, S. (2011). Demystifying shamans and their world: A multidisciplinary study. Imprint Academic.

Ryan, C. (2019). Civilized to Death: The price of progress. Simon & Schuster.

Schneider, K. (2004). Rediscovery of Awe: Splendor, mystery, and the fluid center of life. Paragon House. Sulla, L. (2019). Sacred Journeys. ArsScience.
Teish, L. (1985). Jambalaya: The natural woman’s book of personal charms and practical rituals. Harper & Row.

Treiman, S. (2019, April 29). “Frank Farley, PhD: Q&A about risk-takers in an age of stressing over uncertainty.” Everydayhealth.

Wasson, R. G. (1957, May 13). Seeking the magic mushroom. Life Magazine, pp. 100-120. Watters, E. (2011). Crazy like us: The globalization of the American psyche.” Free Press.

Winkelman, M. J. (2013). Shamanism and psychedelics: A biogenetic structuralist paradigm of ecopsychology. European Journal of Ecopsychology, 4, 90–115.

PART ONE: Shamanism, Consciousness, and the Indigenous Worldview

In Part One, Krippner explores ayahuasca, traditional Indigenous medicine, archetypes, awe, survival, and the evolving relationship between Western thought and shamanic traditions.

Posted here is the preface I wrote for Manuel Almendro’s brilliant book The Labyrinth of Ayahuasca, available in both English and Spanish.

Over the years, Dr. Manuel Almendro has been charting the history of shamanism as well as its association with psychedelic substances. Now he has brought these two fields together in a remarkable book that is destined to become a classic. The Labyrinth of Ayahuasca contains translations of Spanish material not hitherto available to English language readers.

This book is of special interest to me because of my long history regarding ayahuasca. When I was a doctoral student at Northwestern University, my anthropology professor, William McGovern, told me about his encounter with a shaman in Peru. Professor McGovern watched in awe as the shaman drank yagé (another term for ayahuasca) and described a memorial service for another shaman who had just died a few hundred miles away. A while later, Professor McGovern reached that tribe, discovering that the shaman had died unexpectedly, and that all the details of the other shaman’s account were completely accurate. All of this is recorded in his book, Jungle Paths and Inca Ruins, which I have cited many times over the years.

More recently, the Institute of Noetic Sciences asked me to take a few study groups to Brazil, where we encountered the religious groups that use ayahuasca as a sacrament, namely, Santo Daime, União de Vegetal, and Barquinha. When our group was invited to attend an ayahuasca ceremony, we eagerly accepted the offer, which allowed me to have my first ayahuasca session, a remarkable event. A student of mine, Joseph Sulla, and I collected first-person reports from people describing their ayahuasca sessions, publishing the results in the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies in 2000.

Thus, I was delighted to read Manuel’s book, because he has an impressive history, having spent considerable time with Indigenous groups in the rainforests and then reflecting on the profound discoveries he made. He vividly describes the symbiosis of plants, humans, and other animals, and how practitioners of Traditional Indigenous Medicine (TIM) have placed their empirical findings within a framework that seems ineffable, combining objective and subjective experiences. He has contrasted the humility of TIM practitioners with the arrogance of Western interlopers, who make proud declarations of what they have discovered, typically ignoring the centuries of groundwork that preceded them.

Central to TIM is the belief that extra-human forces, the so-called “spirits”– both benign and malevolent–are constantly interacting with humans. It is upon the benevolent spirits that the shamans and master ayahuasceiros call to help community members face the mystery, the terror, and the delights that are not only a part of the sacred sessions but also appear as the challenges, opportunities, and traumas that arise in daily living. From the perspective of Western psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, TIM facilitates work on what can be referred to as the world of subjective reality (WSR), as well as the collective world of objective reality (WOR).

Like Manuel, I have listened to the Icaros, the songs that accompany ayahuasca sessions, but have never had the opportunity to let them seep into my awareness to the extent that they evoke the very soul of their natural ambiance. Manuel, on the other hand, describes their emergence and the way that they permeate the Amazon rainforest and its inhabitants, those that crawl, those that fly, those that sink their roots into the earth, and those that extend into the cosmos itself, addressing the mysteries of life.

Bridges
Manuel uses the term bridges in the sense that he and those like him can help practitioners of TIM to pass from one side to the other. Years ago, when I was working with the intertribal medicine man Rolling Thunder, he used the same word, telling me that I could best serve Indigenous people by creating bridges, so that their wisdom could be passed on to my contemporaries, and that they, in turn, could provide avenues that would enhance and support the needs of his compatriots and those of other “First Nation” peoples.

I also served as a bridge when I attended a meeting of the Rainforest Action Network, where I heard that young people in the Amazon rainforest were hanging themselves in protest of the deforestation that had been running rampant. I told them that Rolling Thunder had faced the same problem when bulldozers were flouting the law by destroying the pine nut trees upon which his community depended for food. He and his crew videotaped the bulldozers and, at night, poured sand into their gas tanks so that they would no longer operate. He sent a delegation to Washington, DC, with the videotapes, playing them to a number of senators, some of whom took action to stop the destruction of the pine nut trees.

Veladas
Manuel’s discussion of shamanism cites the celebrated article in a 1957 issue of Life magazine in which R. Gordon Wasson described his encounter with a Mazatec shaman in central Mexico, who allowed him to participate in one of her mushroom veladas. I never forgot that article, and in 1980, I joined a Mexican psychiatrist and his entourage in a hazardous journey to the hamlet where María Sabina lived. Doña María, who was a friend of the psychiatrist, enabled our group to participate in a velada with one of her students, Doña Cleotilde. It was the dry season, leading Doña Cleotilde to lament that she did not have enough mushrooms for the entire group, so I volunteered to abstain, as I had already experienced los hongitos, “the little ones.” She said that I could be her assistant; as it turned out, I learned more in that capacity than I would have as an active participant.

Our group appreciated the two visits we had with Doña Maria, but her face was lined with sadness. A prior revelation had triggered the murder of her son and the destruction of her home and store. Manuel was correct in pointing out that there was no automatic protection granted to her and others simply because they sang eloquent songs during the veladas.

There are exceptions among Western scholars; indeed, Manuel cites the cultural mythologists as examples. The mythologist Joseph Campbell cogently presented a vast variety of ancient and contemporary mythologies that stand in stark contrast to the Western materialistic paradigm. For Campbell, myths are collections of symbols and images that are metaphorical in nature, as they attempt to explain and guide human conduct. Many mythologies of Eastern Asia are replete with gods, goddesses, demigods, spirits, and the like. When Westerners try to erase references to these entities, they also eliminate metaphors that have been useful for human survival over the eons.

But Manuel is also correct when he sees some hopeful signs of change, especially from those who realize that the interaction between physics and materialistic psychology shows that not all reality can be reduced to mechanical principles. Among those examples are recent books alleging that consciousness is primary, not merely the result of brain activity. In their book Transcendent Mind: Rethinking the Science of Consciousness, Imant Barušs and Julia Mossbridge present a model that contradicts the prevailing view that mental activity originates in the brain. To the contrary, they draw upon studies of mediumship, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, and their interpretation of quantum physics to maintain that consciousness is primary. Their perspective unleashed a variety of criticisms; in addition, their publisher, the American Psychological Association, was attacked as having lost its moorings. However, I felt that the book, and those like it, heralded a growing awareness that the prevailing paradigm has been found wanting and needs to be modified or replaced.

Top/Bottom and Bottom/Top
In another departure from conventional thinking, Manuel observed that medical diagnosis is based on what he calls cognocentric prejudice, which is strongly engrained in Western culture and extended to other cultures. Ethan Watters, in his book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, shows how colonial psychiatry has permeated other cultures. For example, Watters notes that, when a tsunami hit Sri Lanka in 2004, well-meaning “experts” rushed to treat the populace for “trauma,” when the money could have been better used to rebuild the devastated buildings.

Shamans and other practitioners of TIM have constructed non-cognocentric models of thinking, using a different type of logic, one that encompasses synchronicity, symbolism, spirality, fluidity, and reverse causality. These dynamic systems can experiment, evaluate, draw conclusions, and propose new perspectives. Had they not been able to do so, these systems would not have become a part of humanity’s evolutionary heritage.

Western scientists strive to be “objective,” understanding the world by detaching themselves from what they are studying. Practitioners of TIM, in contrast, understand their world by immersing themselves in it. There are exceptions, but most Western scientists take what I would call a “top/bottom” approach, viewing the “bottom” from the “top,” and producing explanations that will help them navigate their way through the “bottom.” Shamans and other practitioners of TIM take a “bottom/top” approach, becoming a part of their world and then moving to the “top,” generalizing from what they have learned.

Archetypes
Carl Gustav Jung wrote about archetypes, the themes and images that reside in what he called the “collective unconscious,” that part of the psyche that has been biologically derived over the millennia. TIM is rooted in these archetypes, while most Western scientists ignore them. Nonetheless, they surface in dreams and in such artistic productions as rock art, literature, music, paintings, and the like. They also serve as the foundation for religious sects, but typically become ossified as dogma – in sharp contrast to TIM, which discards a schema that is no longer useful, replacing it with a more pragmatic one.

Archetypal themes take the form of images, either symbols (that are static) or metaphors (that are constantly in motion). The “hero” archetype is a symbol, but the “hero’s journey” is a metaphor. The “Star Wars” films were successful because they were replete with archetypal material, and this was deliberate, as their creator, George Lucas, read books by Joseph Campbell and other mythologists when creating his stories. Once he began his second trilogy, I was invited to address his staff on the topic of mythology and to suggest colleagues who could do the same. My talk was very well received, and I was shown the “museum” that contained the original light sabers as well as the small models for planets that seemed immense on screen.

Manuel notes that the “hero’s quest,” described eloquently by Campbell, exists in all religions, mythologies, and human belief systems that are armed with a heightened perception of reality. I would add that this thematic account, among others, had survival value in the lives of early humans.

Survival Skills
Early humans and their antecedents needed to survive and to pass on those skills to future generations. The brains and bodies of early humans were adapted to survive and reproduce, not to design scientific experiments. But some attempts to survive outlive their usefulness, as time goes on. Recent studies of holocausts, famines, natural disasters, and their survivors demonstrate how the effects of these traumas can be passed on to their children (and, quite possibly, their grandchildren). These mechanisms are dubbed epigenetics, the modification of gene expression (but not the genes themselves). In a 2019 article in the Journal of Mind and Behavior, Deirdre Barrett and I described epigenetics as the study of cellular variations that are caused by external, environmental factors that “switch” genes on and off, making changes in the phenotype of genetic expression without concomitant changes in the DNA sequence or genotype.

There is a growing body of research with humans and other animals seeming to inherit a predisposition for fear from their ancestors, presumably mediated by the DNA itself, and then a more specific fear conditioning through epigenetics. Primates’ brains are uniquely tuned to recognize spiders and snakes. Human infants are not afraid of these creatures at birth, but learn to fear them more quickly than they learn to fear other stimuli, such as rabbits. Another study found that unborn crickets whose mothers were stalked by wolf spiders demonstrated a greater fear of those spiders after they were born than crickets whose mothers had not been exposed. In his own age, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was reviled for his notion that acquired characteristics could be inherited. Today, he is being hailed as ahead of his time. In reflection, I might suggest that this process, or something like it, may account for the creation of archetypes. The prevalence of snakes and spiders in various mythologies may be archetypal in nature.

I am not an expert on genetics, but I will hazard some conjectures. The exodus of modern humans from Africa has been dated to 60,000 years ago, but students of genomics, the study of genes, have detected traces of modern human genes going back far earlier. Genes of Neanderthals can still be detected in the genes of modern humans, but the genes of the latter also sometimes show up in the genes of the former, suggesting migrations that occurred more than 60,000 years ago. Furthermore, Neanderthal genes contain traces of Denisovans, an even earlier group of so-called “proto- humans.” The data get even more complex when genomic researchers report genes from yet earlier groups, as evidenced by studies in Indonesia. Homo sapiens are the sole survivors of the genus Homo, but their descent was not linear; there were multiple exchanges of genes among the various groups along the way. The survival of Homo sapiens was probably due to an increase in cortical capacity, the size and complexity of the brain, with the latter more important than the former.

The production of artistic objects has been thought to characterize only Homo sapiens, a species that emerged some 300,000 years ago; yet there are archaeological discoveries in Europe that date back even earlier, notably a female figure with an estimated date of about 400,000 years ago, suggesting that artistic productions had a far earlier beginning. This predates the famous Venus of Willendorf (which I was fortunate to view when I was in Vienna) with an estimated date of only 30,000 years ago. Depending on how the term art is defined, there are non-human species that demonstrate that capacity. A species of birds makes attractive constructions to lure mates, and various primates create tools, some of which seem to be aesthetically pleasing.

Furthermore, the notion that human artistic productions are due to “cultural transmission” was abandoned when similar productions were observed in various parts of the world. Jung insisted that archetypes are biological in nature: contemporary scholars might use different terms to describe the plethora of artistic or artistic-like productions by Homo sapiens, “proto- humans,” and non-human species, but their bases are still biological in origin. Human ancestry dates back millions of years, and the evolutionary chain was clearly convoluted, rather than direct.

In his 1992 book, Food of the Gods, Terrence McKenna argued that the ingestion of psychedelic mushrooms played a vital role in human evolution. This hypothesis has not been favorably received by the academic community ‒ in my opinion, rightfully so. I am more impressed by McKenna’s emphasis on how the tenets of shamanism are crucial in today’s world, as he sees various cultural phenomena as evidence, including abstract art, “raves,” rock and roll, tattoos, and other such, also noted by Manuel. McKenna uses the term sick to describe Western culture, in alignment with Manuel’s suggestion that “something has gone wrong.” Manuel’s phrase resounds throughout his book, forcing his readers to examine their culture and their lives to detect their inherent flaws.

Shamans and Shamanism
Manuel points out that the word shamans is not a synonym for shamanism, and I agree, because shamans are practitioners and shamanism is a practice. From my perspective, all shamans, regardless of the name a society gives them, shift their awareness in order to obtain information that is not ordinarily available to members of their community. I often write about the “Five Ds of Shamanism” (in the English language), namely, dance, diet, dreams, drumming, and deprivation (abstaining from sleep, food, sex, etc.). Information that can be obtained through drugs can also be accessed in other ways, including such reputed behaviors as physical “transformation.” When shamans “transform” themselves into their “power animals,” they are contacting their biological roots, perhaps what Jungians refer to as “archetypes.”

Taking a “top-down” perspective, Western scientists and medical practitioners have ignored these valuable assets. When Manuel writes about the importance of “exchanging energy with the environment,” he is describing the shamans’ “bottom/top” approach to their practice. Manuel suggests that the proclivity of many young people in the West to engage in “extreme experiences” and “risk-taking” may be their attempt to make connections with the knowledge that their culture has failed to provide. The psychologist Frank Farley has documented many of these pastimes; when they result in disaster, they demonstrate the lack of context that TIM has always provided. This is especially true in the case of experimentation with mind-altering substances, taken without the wisdom that shamans have provided for themselves and their communities.

Manuel calls for the establishment of “safe spaces” for these adventures, with “maestros” available to guide those who are interested in these worlds of non-ordinary states of consciousness. I recall Timothy Leary advocating such centers half a century ago, but his own attempts to construct them were not grounded in shamanic wisdom. Instead, he advocated the use of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is a classic document but too obtuse and verbal to be of much help to someone in the middle of a “trip.” Far more useful is James Fadiman’s 2011 book, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys. Fadiman’s book is quite well written, as it presents practices for safe and successful psychedelic voyages, including the benefits of having a guide and instructions on how to become a guide. Even so, it does not take a shamanic perspective, which would probably have puzzled most of his readers. However, Fadiman does distinguish between the clinical and cultural uses of psychedelics, which is what Manuel advises. Luc Sala’s 2019 book, Sacred Journeys, takes a similar approach and also contains a section for first-time “trippers.” But Sala digs much deeper and puts much of his material in a shamanic context.

Manuel provides advice of his own within the context of how psychedelics can serve the purpose of self-knowledge, an endeavor that is especially helpful in facing one’s “demons,” especially those rooted in family dysfunctions. Self-knowledge can help people prepare for a psychedelic “trip,” because it involves being aware of one’s own history, especially traumas. He also advises that people engage in inner work without the use of substances, in the course of which they may discover that there is a part of their psyche that cannot be grasped in their ordinary state of consciousness, thus needing further exploration. He advocates caution, noting that, while accessing shamanic knowledge through substances may occur, it is “better to climb the mountain if one is well-equipped.” But he also warns against “pseudo-shamans” and the suspicious substances that they offer, some of them hoping to entrap a naive neophyte. I would add that there are also well-meaning “pseudo-shamans” who have little understanding of the shamanic tradition. When someone claims to be a shaman, I advise asking, “What and where is your community?” Without a community that has conferred shaman status on a person, one cannot claim to be a shaman, or any of the equivalent terms in other languages. Manuel makes the final suggestion that “expanding one’s consciousness” is useful only for those with a felt need for such an experience.

Research into psychedelics, from Manuel’s perspective, demands a methodology involving both first- and third-person descriptions; he describes biosemiotics as such an approach. I have been familiar with semiotics, the study of signs and symbols used in communication, including those that do not include language (such as brands, gestures, computer emojis, logos, traffic signs). Since I once served on the doctoral committee of a student at Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo who used semiotics to study Brazilian mediums and their clients, I can see the value of this approach. “Biosemiotics” expands the range to sign processes in all of Nature, from signaling behavior that identifies the location of game to display behavior that attracts mates. Once again, it comes down to survival and reproduction and how they can be serviced.

Awe
Shamanism, and its equivalent in other languages, is the word utilized for expressing a primordial way of understanding the world, that is, the understanding that originated when humans were first astonished by the powerful natural phenomena they were witnessing. In recent years, the psychologist Kirk Schneider has written about the “psychology of awe,” an emotion that has been too often neglected by other psychologists. When people experience awe, they are transported away from their customary ways of being, confronting the vastness of what they are experiencing, giving it meaning that can be described as “sacred,” “sublime,” or “divine.” The experience of awe also acts as a buffer, keeping people from being overwhelmed by natural forces that are difficult to comprehend. Manuel describes the “premises of existential transpersonalism: a relentless struggle with mystery; the constant presence of death; existence seen as lightning striking the void; despair at impermanence; a call to plenitude; terror of the abyss; vital renewal; consciousness as participatory knowledge; and the elevation of the individual to universal consciousness.” All these observations are examples of awe.

Early humans experienced awe when viewing a sunset, an eclipse, the Northern Lights, the eruption of a volcano, the birth of an albino animal, and various other natural wonders, not all of which were positive in nature. Early humans coped with earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, epidemics, and attacks by wild animals by creating myths that provided a rationale for them. Sometimes they sacrificed humans or other animals to appease a perceived deity. At other times, they built shrines and temples to honor these unseen forces or established codes of conduct and taboos. These rationales were expounded by tribal members whom contemporary psychologists describe as fantasy-prone, and it is likely that those who possessed this trait were the early shamans.

However, it was not only fantasy proneness that was important; the stories that the leaders created had to have explanatory power of some sort. The early shamans were also keen observers of nature, noting what plants animals ate to counteract sickness, observing the best places for hunters to locate prey, and identifying the most suitable location for gatherers to find food. But if early shamans did not have a “track record,” they were probably deposed, exiled, or killed. One can understand why, even today, the role of shaman is not often eagerly pursued. As the Brazilian shaman Mae Meniniha de Gantois told me, “When the spirits knock on your door, you must let them in. If you refuse their call, you will suffer unhappy consequences.”

Mae Meniniha was the granddaughter of the first enslaved couple to be liberated, and her temple in Salvador de Bahia was a rallying point for adherents of Candomblé, an African-Brazilian religion, for which she succeeded in her efforts to obtain legal status. On one of my trips to Brazil, I was honored to become an honorary member of Candomblé and was told that Obatala, the orixá (deity) of wisdom, was my patron. Mae Menininha’s patron was Oxum, the orixá of fertility. When Mae Meniniha died, the state declared a three-day period of mourning, and her temple was declared a national monument.

Because I am in the lineage of Obatala, I was allowed to participate in the initiation of Yeye Luisah Teish in Oakland, California. This remarkable event incorporated rituals that had their roots in West Africa. She often officiates at weddings and baptisms and is a ritualist and keynote speaker. Properly known as Chief Iyanifa Fajembola Fatunmise, she has studied and chronicled events relating to many of Africa’s spiritual cultures.

Colonialism
Manuel observes that shamanism kept evolving, and the evolution took its own path in different societies. Sometimes an unusual birthmark was the sign of a future shaman, and the child was given special training. Sometimes people recovered from a near-fatal illness, which event propelled them into the shamanic role. At other times, there was a lineage of shamans, meaning that one was “born” into the role. Shamanism is ubiquitous for the basic reason that its presence was necessary for the survival of a society.

Manuel observes that shamans were initially looked down upon by most of the colonizers, wherever they were encountered. In 2002, the American Psychologist published my article, “Conflicting perspectives on shamans and shamanism: Points and counterpoints,” in which I documented this hostility. The European states that sent explorers to the Western Hemisphere were, for the most part, those that were executing tens of thousands of alleged witches. Torture yielded confessions that they had made pacts with the Devil, had desecrated sacred Christian ceremonies, or had consorted with evil spirits. Hence, many early chroniclers were Christian clergy who described shamans as “Devil-worshippers.”

A 16th-century account by the Spanish navigator and historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo describes “revered” old men who used tobacco in order to “worship the Devil.” The first person to introduce tobacco to France was a French priest, André Thevet, who described a group of Brazilian practitioners called pajés, describing them as “witches” who “adore the Devil.” The pajés, he wrote, “use certain ceremonies and diabolical invocations” and “invoke the evil spirit” in order to “cure fevers.”

Another French priest, Antoine Biet, observed that the rigors of a decade- long apprenticeship provided the pajés with the “power of curing illness,” but only by becoming “true penitents of the Demon.” Avvakum Petrovich, a 17th-century Russian clergyman, was the first person to use the word “shaman” in a published text, describing one Siberian shaman as “a villain” who “calls upon demons.” It should be noted that these early chroniclers admitted the therapeutic skills of shamans, while attributing their success to “demonic” forces.

I obtained much of this information from a valuable book, Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge, by Jeremy Narby and Frances Huxley. Narby, an anthropologist, had earlier written The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, in which he suggested that the double helix shows up in ancient art forms because that image had become hard-wired into human brains and bodies. At the time, most conventional anthropologists did not take this contention seriously, but that was before the advent of epigenetics and evolutionary psychology.

Changing Times
It was only in the 19th century that some social scientists began to stop characterizing shamans through the lens of religion. But a new set of allegations arose. The French ethnopsychiatrist George Devereux concluded that shamans were mentally “deranged,” and should be considered as severely neurotic or even psychotic. In the 1960s, the American psychiatrist Julian Silverman postulated that shamanism is a form of “acute schizophrenia,” because the two conditions have in common “grossly non- reality-oriented ideation, abnormal perceptual experiences, profound emotional upheavals, and bizarre mannerisms.” According to Silverman, the only difference between shamanic states and contemporary schizophrenia in Western industrialized societies was “the degree of cultural acceptance of the individual’s psychological resolution of a life crisis.” When shamans appeared in films, they were referred to as “witch doctors” and portrayed as eccentrics at best and villains at worst.

As Manuel noted, the shamanic explosion occurred in the second half of the 20th century through information reported by the media, articles in popular magazines, and–‒I might add–‒credible books and articles in academic journals. It has taken several centuries for shamans to attain their rightful status, but they are now increasingly portrayed favorably both in academic and popular literature, a sign of changing times.

Manuel cites Mircea Eliade, who posited that humans developed religious forms in times prior to the Stone Age, which were later spread around the world through continuous flows of migration. I disagree with this great scholar on this point, even though he pioneered the academic interest in shamanism. I hold that these “religious forms” were innate to the human condition, and their adoption, occurring in the earliest of societies, had survival value.

I also disagree with Eliade’s statement that the introduction of mind-altering drugs represented a corruption and “degeneration” of pristine shamanism. To the contrary, the use of psychedelic plants was endemic to shamanism from the very beginning of the practice, as noted in what has survived in artistic depictions as well as oral traditions. Manuel is correct when he states that the shamanic way of life emerged spontaneously as an innate human tendency for confronting the world and struggling to overcome disease.

Seekers
Fast forward to the present. Manuel points out that contemporary “seekers” do not have adequate frames of reference for the visions induced by the ingestion of these plants, nor do they have the behavioral or philosophical wherewithal to place the experiences within a sacred context.

As a result, Western self-proclaimed “shamans” have set up centers for ayahuasca and plant therapy in the Amazon and elsewhere to the detriment of the traditional practitioners and their clients, plus the diminishment of accessibility to the plants, due to over-harvesting. Some traditional shamans have exploited the unrealistic expectations of Western seekers, resulting in the deaths and permanent psychoses of some of them. While there has been some movement toward finding a way to integrate Traditional Indigenous Medicine (TIM) within the Western context, this is still in the very early stages. Manuel notes that the government of Nicaragua is taking steps to safeguard the sacred plants and traditions, while at the same time identifying another hazard: that evangelical Christians have murdered numerous shamanic practitioners, reverting to the colonists’ accusation that shamans are demonic and must be punished.

I am a member of an international Ayahuasca Researchers listserv, one originated by the Brazilian-American anthropologist Bia Labate. Our members not only publish scholarly articles about ayahuasca but also document the all-too-prevalent accounts of faux shamanic centers, the exploitation and trivialization of ayahuasca rituals, and the attacks on the practice by powerful religious and governmental authorities. Bia’s co-authored book, Ayahuasca, Ritual, and Religion in Brazil, explores the formation of religious communities in the Brazilian Amazon that base their rituals, myths, and guiding principles on the consumption of ayahuasca. The book summarizes the historical growth of this area of study, particularly from the standpoint of research methods in the human sciences.

One of my own research projects involved personal accounts of some 200 contemporary artists and musicians who had charted the impact of psychedelic substances (including ayahuasca) on their creative processes and products. My findings were in accord with Manuel’s conclusion that only if a person has previous creative potential will it be further developed. Arlene Sklar-Weinstein, for example, considered her earlier work to be “competent but derivative.” A single LSD session opened her art to include novel images and modes of expression that continued to develop over the following years.

Not all the participants in my study had psychedelic experiences that were totally pleasant, but they incorporated the negative images into their work. Manuel points out that some dangers come from an unknown, immaterial world that Westerners neither understand nor respect. And few Western researchers take the time or the effort that marks every chapter of Manuel’s book. Without the requisite learning, one descends into the underworld of the unconscious and is unable to integrate experiences with what I would call archetypal forces. Manuel adds that the troubling experiences are toxified by the lens of declining Western culture. Indeed, something has gone terribly wrong.

In 2019, a team of researchers from Brazil and England published the first study of the use of ayahuasca on suicidality that used a control group. Their 30 participants, all Brazilians, were deeply depressed people for whom treatment had been ineffective, despite the use of a variety of antidepressant medications. They had been recruited from outpatient clinics and from advertisements. To be eligible, the participants needed to have had no previous experience with psychedelics, no current medical diagnosis, no neurological disorder, no history of substance abuse, no family history of schizophrenia, and no diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder or mania. The participants needed to be between the ages of 18 and 60; pregnant women were excluded from the study. All participants underwent psychiatric interviews and took a psychological test to ensure that they met the criteria of major depressive disorder but were not at imminent suicidal risk. All participants were told to discontinue their medications an average of two weeks prior to the experiment and for at least a week following the experiment. Daily use of benzodiazepines was permitted, except during the acute phases of the intervention.

On the morning of the intervention, participants were reminded of how to deal with their experiences and offered strategies for coping with those that seemed to be difficult. They were told to pay special attention to their bodily

They were told to pay special attention to their bodily feelings, their thoughts, and their emotions. A previously determined playlist was used during the entire intervention.

In individual settings, participants were administered a single dose of ayahuasca or a placebo that had been designed to mimic the color, taste, and bodily feelings that characterize ayahuasca. A staff member, who did not know which participants had been administered ayahuasca, was available to provide support if needed. The sessions lasted about eight hours, following which time participants could return home or spend the night on the premises, although some required a stay of up to a week.

Suicidality was assessed before the intervention began, a day after the intervention, two days after, and seven days after. The assessment used for statistical analysis was a 10-item instrument based on the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale, a measure with a long history of utility in the diagnosis of depressed individuals.

Half of the group members had made a suicide attempt, and three out of four had a fundamental psychological problem in addition to suicidality. There were 30 members in the ayahuasca group, and 30 members in the placebo group.

The scores at the end of the first day following intervention showed a decrease in suicidality on the part of the ayahuasca group that was higher than that of the placebo group, a difference that held up during the second and seventh-day follow-up. The investigators concluded that ayahuasca leads to decreases in suicidality that are sustained from one to seven days after administration. When compared with other interventions, ayahuasca treatment of this nature was comparable to, but not superior to, such treatments as cognitive-behavior therapy and antidepressant medication. However, direct comparisons cannot be made because of the differences in research procedures.

From my perspective, the results might have been stronger if there had been more interaction between the staff member and the participants. Also, there were no “integration” sessions in which participants could have discussed how they brought the lessons from the session into their daily lives. In addition, a longer period of follow-up would have been useful in order to determine the long-lasting effects of the treatment. However, this was a promising beginning of a treatment that might assist potential victims of “the allure of suicide.”

Further, this study is in accord with several research projects cited by Manuel, demonstrating the effectiveness of ayahuasca in treating various disorders. Manuel is very careful in observing that anecdotal accounts are only suggestive of evidence, and do not replace carefully designed research studies. He suggests that these studies, whenever possible, take both a ‘third person’ and a ‘first person’ approach. In the latter instance, the researchers take part in the ayahuasca session they are studying; in the former instance, they step back and reflect on what they have observed and experienced.

— End of Part One —

In Part Two, Krippner examines contemporary psychedelic research, the challenges facing traditional shamanic cultures, Manuel Almendro’s contributions, and the future of Indigenous wisdom.

The Case of “Amanda“ (2015) — A Unique Partnership:

Examining Information in Dreams about Deceased Veterans

Stanley Krippner, PhD

Amanda Fischer (a pseudonym) is an events planner for the U.S. Army, coordinating events for “relationship enrichment programs” such as retreats for both married and unmarried soldiers. In addition, she works with Army chaplains; her father was an ordained minister and she attended Protestant worship services (most of them non-denominational) in her youth. As a child, she recalled several dreams that were related to religious themes, as well as dreams that appeared to forecast future events, and lucid dreams in which she realized she was dreaming. In addition, Amanda had a few dreams about deceased family members. In one of them, her grandmother (of Native American descent) told her that she understood why Amanda could not be present when she passed.

In the course of her work with the U.S. Army, she met Wink, who had been a chaplain’s assistant for several years. About six months after assisting Army chaplains, Amanda began having unusual dreams and started telling them to Wink. She did not tell Wink all of her dreams – only those involving what she calls a “definite compulsion” to share them with her co-worker. These dreams contained specific names and other information that could be verified.

Amanda contacted me early in 2015 and has given me written permission to use her dream reports in my ongoing research concerning anomalous dreams. Our correspondence has been by email, and all the names in this report are fictitious. Several other measures have been taken to preserve anonymity. I conducted a Skype interview with Wink early in 2016, which verified the information given to me by Amanda.

Amanda wrote me that her first anomalous dream in the series occurred about six months after she met Wink, a Native American from Arizona. His clan has an unusual language, very different from the Navajo language spoken by his father. Wink, who, as he put it, was “raised as a warrior,” was told by his elders that he had been given “the gift of discernment.” Recently, he held a conversation with tribal elders in which he told them about Amanda’s dreams. They replied that her ability was the complementary gift to his. Wink had just begun to tell her about his military career and his overseas service when she had her first dream of the series:

Case One

I am walking across the road to see a friend’s new house. Before I can return to my house, I have to go through a building. I am in an American Legion building, where I start playing bridge with two ladies. One lady is in her late 50s, and the other is her mother, about 80. I tell them I am from Kentucky, and then the daughter remarks that her mother collects business cards from the record stores she visits in Louisville. She hands me a stack of cards, and in the middle is a lanyard with the name “Sanchez” on it. I recall that all of the Special Operations personnel have to wear identification lanyards while they are in their compound. I call Wink so that he can see what is in my hand. He says, “I’ll be right there.” I look on the other side of the lanyard, and there is a picture of a rattlesnake with a knife through its tail. Wink then comes into the building, hugs the two ladies, and walks off with them. Then I wake up.

The next morning, I called Wink on his way to work and told him a little about my dream. He came right over to my house. He told me that one of his friends, Jeremy Sanchez, was killed in 2004. The only surviving members of his immediate family were his mother and grandmother.

Before Jeremy was killed, he was auditioning for a spot in a Special Operations unit. The symbol of the unit he wanted to be in was a rattlesnake with a sword in its tail.

Case Two

In this dream, I am arguing with Wink about the location of a venue for a special event. Then I go walking down a hallway in a property where I’ve coordinated events in the past. I go into a large suite where a couple of sleeping rooms share a common parlor area. As I walk into the parlor, a man is sitting

on a sofa. I sit down and start talking to him about the nature of his work. I also want to share with him my connection with the Special Operations aviation world and with Wink. He hands me a manila folder, and I see a name on the side. It is “Bandrews.”

When I told Wink about this dream, he told me that a pilot friend of his had died on a mission. It was the first time that a manifest had been done in a way that would add the first two letters of the soldier’s first name to the soldier’s last name. Britt Andrews was the pilot on that mission, but due to the manifest change, he was listed as “Bandrews.” The manifest should have read “Brandrews,” but someone had made a mistake.

Case Three

This dream included several people. I hear a missile siren and dive into a nearby building. It is like an old college dormitory filled with young men. I realize it is a fraternity. I look in one room, and a bunch of guys are together playing video games and talking. I ask for someone, and they tell me his room is next door. I knock on his door, and his roommate says that he is in the gymnasium. I walk into the gym and see a group of guys standing at a desk at one end of the open gym. I ask if I can toss the football around with them, and we make small talk. One guy says his name is “Larry,” another introduces himself as “Adam,” and then I say I am looking for “Patrick.” They say, “He’s over there,” and I see a guy sitting with a girl in his lap. I say “Hello,” but tell them that he is not the “Patrick” I am looking for.

When I told Wink about the dream, I mentioned that I had a “Larry,” an “Adam,” and two “Patricks” in it. Wink was disconcerted. He told me that all of these names were the same as members of a group of Rangers he knew. “Larry” and “Adam” were both killed in IED attacks.

Wink had to bring “Larry” to the hospital in two pieces. The two “Patricks” grew up in theRanger Regiment together. The first “Patrick” went into battle and was shot. The second“Patrick” ran in to save him and was carrying him out when he was fatally shot. The first“Patrick” died of blood loss. Wink said that the first “Patrick” was his roommate in Rangerschool, and that “Patrick” had pictures of him and his fiancée around his bed. Wink remembered that, in every picture, “Patrick’s” fiancée was sitting on his lap.

Case Four

Wink and I are upstairs, standing in my bedroom. We are having a conversation about a new end table. He keeps trying to open the blinds, but I tell him not to, because I do not like people being able to see into my room. But then he looks down and sees someone whom he starts helping up the wall and into the window. Wink looks at me, puzzled, because he’s surprised that he is seeing a man he knows is deceased. But they start talking about random things, and the man sits on the floor of my bedroom. A woman comes in and sits down, and two kids start climbing on him. He says that it’s time for him to go. Wink looks at him and asks me in an aside if I see the scars on his face. I hadn’t until he mentioned them. Then I see scars on the right side of his face, a big one by his eye, and smaller ones on his mouth and cheek. We then start walking down the stairs with him. He starts complaining that his right hip is hurting, and I give him support as we’re walking and reassurance that he will be home soon. I sit him in an old chair at what would be the front door of my house. As he sits down, I take Wink by the hand and tell him that we need to leave him.

When I spoke to Wink about the details of this dream, he said that it sounded like Evan Greene, a Navy SEAL he was very close to. The SEAL, in fact, did have two children. His right eye was a glass eye, and there were scars on the right side of his face from catching shrapnel. The fight he ultimately died in was in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, when he climbed up a wall and sat as a decoy so that the rest of his team could take over the building. He was shot 17 times. As for the front door of our house, Wink and I had blessed that door with sage so it would be the only entrance through which spirits are supposed to enter.

These dreams are usually about deceased persons whom Wink knew, most of them soldiers with whom he had served. He himself was actually in almost all the battles in which they died. I never see anything bloody or violent, though. The dreams take place in a casual setting. I’ve learned that the dreams with specific names and details that I remember after waking are the ones I should relay to Wink.

Despite the brutal and violent ways in which these soldiers died, they always appear perfectly healthy in my dreams and in good spirits. I feel that they are trying to reach out to Wink to tell him that they are fine and not in the condition in which he last saw them. Perhaps his guilt and overwhelming feelings cloud his ability to have these dreams himself, and so they come through me.

Explanations other than after-death communication would include fraud, faulty memory, and coincidence. To rule out fraud, one would need to interview Wink to be sure that the dreams as reported by Amanda were identical to the dreams related to Wink. Even so, if there had been collusion, one could not easily determine if Amanda and Wink had concocted the dreams to fit the circumstances of the demise of Wink’s buddies. The fraud hypothesis needs to be considered. However, the scenario is extremely convoluted. It would have been simpler for Amanda to make up the dreams without bringing in another person, one who, upon questioning, might admit complicity. One must also question the motivation. Dreaming about deceased persons is not the easiest way to garner attention in the contemporary United States. Furthermore, Amanda has made no attempt to use these dreams for commercial gain or publicity purposes. Finally, if Wink is engaging in fraud, there would be serious repercussions to his military career should his integrity be questioned.

Another alternative explanation would be faulty memory. People’s dream reports never capture a dream in its entirety. Could Amanda have started to tell Wink the dream, only to have him intervene and ask, “Could this have been my buddy Hal?” Amanda could then have replied, “Yes, I believe his name was Hal or Howard.” Over time, the conversation might have been forgotten, and the dream report that was shared with me could have left out its evolution.

Although this scenario is possible, it seems highly unlikely that this pattern would have repeated itself several times without either Amanda or Wink becoming aware of it.

The third possibility is telepathy or some other form of “super-psi.” Amanda could have obtained information about the deceased soldiers through some type of “remote perception” and attributed this information to her connection with Wink. The argument against this suggestion rests on the specific details in Amanda’s dreams, only four of which have been included in this presentation. All things considered, the alternative explanations lack clear explanatory value.

In any event, we are left with a remarkable story. If the details as presented are accurate, Amanda’s collection of dream reports provides useful information relevant to what researchers call “the survival hypothesis.” The deceased persons who appear in Amanda’s dreams seem motivated to contact the living for benevolent purposes. The deceased soldiers cannot do this directly because their surviving comrade, Wink, is not a suitable conduit. However, Wink’s friend Amanda is an excellent conduit who allows them to convey their positive message quite well. Amanda’s decision to share these dreams with a professional researcher rather than a reporter for a tabloid attests to her sincerity and integrity.

References

Krippner, S., Faith, L., & Suzuki, Y. (2000). National and gender differences in reports of exotic dreams. Dream Network, 19(1), 40-42.

O’Keefe, C., & Wiseman, R. (2005). Testing alleged mediumship: Methods and results. British Journal of Psychology, 96, 165-179.

Rock, A. J. (Ed.). (2013). The survival hypothesis: Essays on mediumship. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Schouten, S. A. (1994). An overview of quantitatively evaluated studies with mediums and psychics. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 88, 221-254.

Stemman, R. (2005). Spirit communication: A comprehensive guide to the extraordinary world of mediums, psychics, and the afterlife. London, UK: Piatkus Books.

Thalbourne, M., Crawley, S. E., & Houran, J. (2008). Temporal lobe lability in the highly transliminal mind. Personality and Individual Differences, 1, 180-185.

Stanley KRIPPNER, Ph.D is the co-author of Extraordinary Dreams and How to Use Them and Haunted by Combat: Understanding PTSD in Veterans, and co-editor of Varieties of Anomalous Experience.

Examining the Scientific Evidence. A full copy of this report will appear in a future issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies (JNDS).

The human potential movement lost one of its most luminous voices on May 16, 2026, when Jean Houston passed away at the age of 89. Born in New York City on May 10, 1937, she lived a life so large, so inspiring, and so thoroughly devoted to the expansion of human possibility that her passing leaves a profound silence in communities around the world — including our own.

For those of us in humanistic psychology and the healing arts, Jean Houston was more than an influential thinker. She was a living demonstration of what she taught: that human beings contain within them depths of intelligence, creativity, and spiritual capacity that ordinary life barely touches. Her entire career was an invitation — urgent, joyful, and relentless — to go deeper.

Jean held a B.A. from Barnard College, a Ph.D. in psychology from the Union Graduate School, and a Ph.D. in religion from the Graduate Theological Foundation. But credentials never captured her. She was equally at home in the worlds of neuroscience and mythology, somatic experience and ancient wisdom, psychedelic research and classical philosophy. She synthesized these streams not as an academic exercise but as living practice.

Together with her husband Robert Masters, whom she married in 1965, she co-founded the Foundation for Mind Research and conducted groundbreaking research at the intersection of body, mind, and spirit for fourteen years. Their early work arose from a remarkable moment in history: while participating in a U.S. government-sanctioned research project on the effects of LSD, Houston and Masters documented the expanded cognition and creativity participants experienced, which was published in their landmark 1966 volume The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience.

When the government banned psychedelic research, they shifted their focus to exploring other ways of achieving altered states of consciousness without the use of drugs, and their 1972 book Mind Games detailed findings that guided imagery and specific programs of bodily movement could reprogram the brain toward more integrated ways of experiencing the world. John Lennon reportedly called it one of the two most important books of his time. For practitioners of energy psychology, that pivot holds special resonance: the insight that the body-mind system can be reorganized through non-pharmacological means remains central to our work today.

Jean was one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement and one of the leading experts in the field of myth and archetype. Her theoretical contributions offered a map of consciousness that was experiential, embodied, and cross-cultural.

She explored the ancient concept of entelechy and proposed that individuals possess an innate potentiality which motivates their experience and actions — a kind of telos embedded in the soul itself, pressing toward fuller expression. This idea, drawn from Aristotle and the mystery traditions and woven through Houston’s own synthesis, resonates deeply with the idea that healing is not simply the removal of symptoms, but the restoration of a person’s deeper coherence and trajectory.

Over more than fifty years as an international teacher of human potential, she authored 29 books and served as a consultant for the United Nations, teaching and mentoring heads of state, governments, and community leaders in more than 100 countries. Her concept of “Social Artistry” — a framework for developing leadership that integrates the physical, psychological, mythic, and spiritual dimensions of human experience — was applied in development contexts across the globe.

Jean was a force of nature — a scholar, a storyteller, and a sage. She brought to her work a mesmerizing narrative gift, the heart of a poet, and a vast, encompassing wit. Her knowledge spanned the breadth of human history and culture, with a special devotion to ancient wisdom traditions, from which she distilled timeless inspiration for modern life.

Reportedly her last words, as she was letting go, were “Thank you, I love you,” spoken again and again. It is impossible to imagine a more fitting farewell from a woman who spent her life helping others discover how much there is to be grateful for, and how much love the human heart can hold.

Jean’s legacy is woven into the fabric of what we do. Her insistence that healing must address the whole person — body, psyche, myth, and spirit — anticipated and reinforced the integrative, multidimensional approach that defines our field. Her pioneering exploration of non-ordinary states, somatic awareness, guided imagery, and the deep structures of consciousness gave generations of healers both permission and language to go where conventional psychology would not.

She showed us that the human being is vaster than any diagnosis, and that beneath every wound lies an unlived wholeness waiting to be called forth.

We are grateful for her extraordinary life and her extraordinary gifts. May she rest in the fullness she always believed was possible.

“Mr. Tayer” A Story by Jean Houston

When I was about fourteen I was seized by enormous waves of grief over my parents’ breakup. I had read somewhere that running would help dispel anguish, so I began to run to school every day down Park Avenue in New York City. I was a great big overgrown girl (5 feet eleven by the age of eleven) and one day I ran into a rather frail old gentleman in his seventies and knocked the wind out of him. He laughed as I helped him to his feet and asked me in French- accented speech, “Are you planning to run like that for the rest of your life?”

“Yes, sir” I replied. “It looks that way.”

“Well, Bon Voyage!” he said.

“Bon Voyage!” I answered and sped on my way.

About a week later I was walking down Park Avenue with my fox terrier, Champ, and again I met the old gentleman.

“Ah.” he greeted me, “my friend the runner, and with a fox terrier. I knew one like that years ago in France. Where are you going?”

“Well, sir.” I replied, “I’m taking Champ to Central Park.”

“I will go with you,” he informed me.

And thereafter, for about a year or so, the old gentleman and I would meet and walk together often several times a week in Central Park. He had a long French name but asked me to call him by the first part of it, which was “Mr. Tayer” as far as I could make out.

The walks were magical and full of delight. Not only did Mr. Tayer seem to have absolutely no self-consciousness, but he was always being seized by wonder and astonishment over the simplest things. He was constantly and literally falling into love. I remember one time when he suddenly fell on his knees, his long Gallic nose raking the ground, and exclaimed to me, “Jeanne, look at the caterpillar. Ahhhh!” I joined him on the ground to see what had evoked so profound a response that he was seized by the essence of caterpillar. “How beautiful it is”, he remarked, “this little green being with its wonderful funny little feet. Exquisite! Little furry body, little green feet on the road to metamorphosis.” He then regarded me with equal delight. “Jeanne, can you feel yourself to be a caterpillar?”

“Oh yes.” I replied with the baleful knowing of a gangly, pimply faced teenager.

“Then think of your own metamorphosis.” he suggested. “What will you be when you become a butterfly, une papillon, eh? What is the butterfly of Jeanne?” (What a great question for a fourteen-year-old girl!) His long, gothic, comic-tragic face would nod with wonder. “Eh, Jeanne, look at the clouds! God’s calligraphy in the sky! All that transforming. moving, changing, dissolving, becoming. Jeanne, become a cloud and become all the forms that ever were.”

Or there was the time that Mr. Tayer and I leaned into the strong wind that suddenly whipped through Central Park, and he told me, “Jeanne, sniff the wind.” I joined him in taking great snorts of wind. “The same wind may once have been sniffed by Jesus Christ (sniff). by Alexander the Great (sniff), by Napoleon (sniff), by Voltaire (sniff), by Marie Antoinette (sniff)!” (There seemed to be a lot of French people in that wind.) “Now sniff this next gust of wind in very deeply for it contains.. . Jeanne d’Arc! Sniff the wind once sniffed by Jeanne dArc. Be filled with the winds of history.”

It was wonderful. People of all ages followed us around, laughing—not at us but with us. Old Mr. Tayer was truly diaphanous to every moment and being with him was like being in attendance at God’s own party, a continuous celebration of life and its mysteries. But mostly Mr. Tayer was so full of vital sap and juice that he seemed to flow with everything. Always he saw the interconnections between things—the way that everything in the universe, from fox terriers to tree bark to somebody’s red hat to the mind of God, was related to everything else and was very, very good.

He wasn’t merely a great appreciator, engaged by all his senses. He was truly penetrated by the reality that was yearning for him as much as he was yearning for it. He talked to the trees, to the wind, to the rocks as dear friends, as beloved even. ‘Ah, my friend, the mica schist layer, do you remember when...?” And I would swear that the mica schist would begin to glitter back. I mean, mica schist will do that, but on a cloudy day?! Everything was treated as personal, as sentient, as “thou.” And everything that was “thou” was ensouled with being. and it thou-ed back to him. So when I walked with him, I felt as though a spotlight was following us, bringing radiance and light everywhere. And I was constantly seized by astonishment in the presence of this infinitely beautiful man, who radiated such sweetness, such kindness.

I remember one occasion when he was quietly watching a very old woman watching a young boy play a game. “Madame”, he suddenly addressed her. She looked up, surprised that a stranger in Central Park would speak to her. “Madame,” he repeated, “why are you so fascinated by what that little boy is doing?” The old woman was startled by the question, but the kindly face of Mr. Tayer seemed to allay her fears and evoke her memories. “Well, sir,” she replied in an ancient but pensive voice, “the game that boy is playing is like one I played in this park around 1880, only it’s a mite different.” We noticed that the boy was listening, so Mr. Tayer promptly included him in the conversation. “Young fellow, would you like to learn the game as it was played so many years ago?”

“Well. . .yeah. sure, why not?” the boy replied. And soon the young boy and the old woman were making friends and sharing old and new variations on the game—as unlikely an incident to occur in Central Park as could be imagined.

But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Mr. Tayer was the way that he would suddenly look at you. He looked at you with wonder and astonishment joined to unconditional love joined to a whimsical regarding of you as the cluttered house that hides the holy one. I felt myself primed to the depths by such seeing. I felt evolutionary forces wake up in me by such seeing, every cell and thought and potential palpably changed. I was yeasted, greened, awakened by such seeing, and the defeats and denigrations of adolescence redeemed. I would go home and tell my mother, who was a little skeptical about my walking with an old man in the park so often, “Mother, I was with my old man again, and when I am with him, I leave my littleness behind.” That deeply moved her. You could not be stuck in littleness and be in the radiant field of Mr. Tayer.

The last time that I ever saw him was the Thursday before Easter Sunday, 1955. I brought him the shell of a snail. “Ah. Escargot.” he exclaimed and then proceeded to wax ecstatic for the better part of an hour. Snail shells, and galaxies, and the convolutions in the brain, the whorl of flowers and the meanderings of rivers were taken up into a great hymn to the spiralling evolution of spirit and matter. When he had finished, his voice dropped, and he whispered almost in prayer, “Omega ...omega. . .omega..” Finally he looked up and said to me quietly, “Au revoir, Jeanne”.

“Au revoir, Mr. Tayer,” I replied, “I’ll meet you at the same time next Tuesday.”

For some reason. Champ, my fox terrier didn’t want to budge, and when I pulled him along, he whimpered, looking back at Mr.Tayer, his tail between his legs. The following Tuesday I was there waiting where we always met at the corner of Park Avenue and 83rd Street. He didn’t come. The following Thursday I waited again. Still he didn’t come. The dog looked up at me sadly. For the next eight weeks I continued to wait, but he never came again. It turned out that he had suddenly died that Easter Sunday but I didn’t find that out for years.

Some years later, someone handed me a book without a cover which was titled The Phenomenon of Man. As I read the book I found it strangely familiar in its concepts. Occasional words and expressions loomed up as echoes from my past. When, later in the book, I came across the concept of the “Omega point.” I was certain. I asked to see the jacket of the book, looked at the author’s picture, and, of course, recognized him immediately. There was no forgetting or mistaking that face. “Mr. Tayer” was Teilhard de Chardin, the great priest-scientist, poet and mystic, and during that lovely and luminous year I had been meeting him outside the Jesuit rectory of St. Ignatius where he was living most of the time.

I have often wondered if it was my simplicity and innocence that allowed the fullness of Teilhard’s being to be revealed. To me he was never the great priest-paleontologist Pere Teilhard. He was old Mr. Tayer. Why did he always come and walk with me every Tuesday and Thursday, even though I’m sure he had better things to do? Was it that in seeing me so completely, he himself could be completely seen at a time when his writings, his work, were proscribed by the Church, when he was not permitted to teach, or even to talk about his ideas?

As I later found out, he was undergoing at that time the most excruciating agony that there is—the agony of utter disempowerment and psychological crucifixion. And yet to me he was always so present—whimsical, engaging, empowering. How could that be?

I think it was because Teilhard had what few Church officials did—the power and grace of the Love that passes all understanding. He could write about Love being the evolutionary force, the Omega point, that lures the world and ourselves into becoming, because he experienced that love in a piece of rock, in the wag of a dog’s tail, in the eyes of a child. He was so in love with everything that he talked in great particularity, even to me as an adolescent, about the desire atoms have for each other, the yearning of molecules, of organisms, of bodies, of planets, of galaxies, all of creation longing for that radiant bonding, for joining, for the deepening of their condition, for becoming more by virtue of yearning for and finding the other. He knew about the search for the Beloved. His model was Christ. For Teilhard, Christ was the Beloved of the soul.

Years later, while addressing some Jesuits, a very old Jesuit came up to me. He was a friend of Teilhard’s—and he told me how Teilhard used to talk of his encounters in the Park with a girl called Jeanne.

Jean Houston
Pomona, New York
March, 1988

Meeting Amyr Amiden

My first encounter with Amyr Amiden was on February 17, 1993, when a Brazilian psychologist and I led a tour of Brazilian spiritual centers sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences. One of our stops was in Brasilia, where we were greeted by Pierre Weil, the Rector of UNIPAZ, an institute and university devoted to the study and application of peace and conflict resolution. Dr. Weil was eager for us to meet Amyr Amiden, a “psychic sensitive,” with whom he had been working.

Pierre told us that Amyr was born in 1941, of Syrian and Persian descent. He lives in Brasilia, was divorced, and has a young son. He works for a labor union and helps his brother run an import business. On weekends, he serves as a volunteer at a leper colony. During our luncheon and subsequent discussion session with Amyr, members of our group reported the sudden appearance of small, polished stones, as well as the putative transmutation of tinfoil into gold foil.

I invited the members of our group to draft reports about our two sessions with Amyr. One wrote:

“I was sitting in the lunchroom about four feet behind Amyr…. I heard Dr. Weil say, ‘Here it goes again.’ His statement was in response to hearing something drop and bounce inside the room. Shortly thereafter, Stanley Krippner … walked over and retrieved from the floor a small black stone encased in mud. Dr. Krippner asked Amyr if he felt that these phenomena were the work of some spiritual force…. Dr. Krippner mentioned the name ‘Christ’ in this dialogue. Instantly, Amyr began to bleed from his palms and the back of his hands. A dark red mark also appeared on his forehead.”

Another group member remembered:

“After arriving, we were conducted to the restaurant and had an excellent vegetarian lunch. Lunch was almost over, and I was standing close to where Stan Krippner and a stranger were sitting. Suddenly, something fell to the ground with a slight noise. It looked like a small piece of mud about 2” by 1” by 1”. I paid no attention, but Stan picked it up and found a smooth stone inside, about 1/2” in diameter.... Whilst talking at lunch with Stan, the conversation with the stranger shifted to Jesus Christ. At this mention of Jesus, red spots appeared on the backs of each hand of the stranger and on the palms. We were invited to look at this manifestation of the “stigmata.” The stranger was introduced as Amyr Amiden. He is of medium height and has a grey beard. He was born in Brazil into an Islamic family, although all religions are the same to him now.”

Asked to reflect on an interview with Amyr, a member of the group recounted:

“Apparently, his father and grandfather were ‘sensitive.’ All his siblings were ‘sensitive,’ but only he and his grandfather manifested ‘apports’ -- the anomalous appearance of objects with no easily discernible source. Amyr claims he can ‘astral travel’ and return with information that can be checked later. He says there have been reports of his ‘bilocation,’ but he has no control or awareness when this occurs. He has healing abilities and claims to have healed a few lepers in the initial stages of their illness, but not in later stages.”

Another group member noted:

“Pierre Weil showed us a chalice that Amyr held shortly before we arrived. What appeared to be blood covered a cross on one side of the chalice. Dr. Weil explained that, when Amyr picked up the chalice, the blood exuded from the cross. I picked it up for a closer inspection and, after looking closely at the marks inside and out, I passed it around to the rest of our group. When it returned, within it were several communion wafers that had not been there when it left my hands. To the best of my knowledge, the chalice was in the hands, or within plain sight, of our group the entire time.”

A Return to Brasilia

In 1994, I returned to Brasilia, accompanied by Michael Winkler, a psychology student from Colorado. We were part of a team assembled by Pierre Weil, which included Roberto Crema (a Brazilian psychologist), Ruth Kelson (a Brazilian physician), and Harbans Lol Arora (a Brazilian physicist). Our purpose was to conduct a disciplined inquiry into Amyr’s phenomena, and to determine if they had physiological or geomagnetic correlates, the latter to be measured by a geo-magnetometer, a device consisting of strips of copper wrapped around a magnetic core. The Earth has a magnetic field that extends into space, where it interacts with other phenomena. As a result, geomagnetic readings fluctuate from hour to hour and from place to place.

Galileo famously wrote, “Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” Rising to this challenge, I created an Anomaly Observation Scale (AOS), which ranged from 1 (no apparent anomaly) to 5 (extraordinary degree of apparent anomaly). At the end of each day, three members of our team (always including me) rated each of the observations associated with Amyr on this scale, and the mean was recorded for subsequent statistical analysis. Amyr collaborated with us for eight days, reporting to the UNIPAZ offices following his workday, except on weekends, when he chose the time for our meetings.

Our design stated that a mean (or average) of 2.1 or higher would designate an event as an “apparent anomaly.” A total of ninety-five unusual events were observed, of which ninety-one were scored as “apparent anomalies.” Using a statistic called the “Spearman rank order correlation method” to investigate associations among variables, we employed what are called “non-parametric statistics.”

Physiological Readings

Ruth Kelson took twenty-one pulse readings from Amyr that were followed by apparent anomalous events. The means from the AOS were paired with the corresponding pulse readings, yielding results that were not statistically significant ‒ in other words, what would be expected by chance. When the AOS means from events preceding the readings were paired with the twenty-two corresponding pulse readings, the results were also not significant. Ruth considered that Amyr’s rapid pulse indicated tachycardia.

Systolic blood pressure reflects the maximum effort the heart makes while pumping blood. Diastolic blood pressure reflects the amount of pressure between heartbeats, and Ruth measured both.

There were twelve systolic blood pressure (BP) readings followed by apparent anomalies, thirteen systolic BP readings with antecedent anomalies, and twelve diastolic BP readings followed by apparent anomalies, all yielding non-significant results. Ruth considered Amyr’s blood pressure to be slightly elevated due to hypertension.

When thirteen diastolic BP readings were paired with antecedent apparent anomalies, the results were statistically significant. In other words; the higher the diastolic BP after the event, the higher the mean rating on the AOS. Ruth considered Amyr’s blood pressure to be slightly elevated, also likely from hypertension.

I concluded that we had designed a research method that would be used by other researchers of anomalous phenomena. In the case of Amyr, there was a measurable link between his physiology and the magnitude of his phenomena. In other words, the more remarkable the apports, the more effort was required on Amyr’s part. Because Amyr could not produce apports voluntarily, there were apparent unconscious factors at play. I surmised that Amyr had made a connection with an “archetype” from the “collective unconscious.” These are terms that the famed psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung used when describing his work. Jung proposed that all people are linked with forces extending beyond their individual psyches. Hence, Amyr’s conscious, rational functioning was taken by surprise when his unconscious forces manifested an apport or other anomalies. If Amyr had made a connection with the “Trickster” archetype, for example, his anomalous phenomena could not be produced “on demand.”

Geomagnetic Readings

Michael Winkler monitored geomagnetic activity with a geo-magnetometer on loan from the University of Brasilia for three days. He placed the device in an open field, where there was minimal competing electrical interference.

Readings were recorded every two minutes. There were fifteen geomagnetic readings followed by apparent anomalies, yielding non-significant results.

There were seventeen geomagnetic readings preceded by apparent anomalous events; this time, the results were statistically significant. They suggested that atmospheric electricity and other aspects of geomagnetic activity provided favorable conditions for Amyr’s anomalous events.

Correlation is not causation, and there did not appear to be a “cause-and-effect” relationship between the anomalies and either geomagnetic activity or Amyr’s diastolic blood pressure. They all appeared to be part of the same “package,” one external to Amyr and one internal.

When the mean ratings on the AOS of each daily session were paired with daily geomagnetic activity for South America, the results were not statistically significant. In contrast, when the mean AOS ratings of each session were paired with daily geomagnetic activity for the entire Southern Hemisphere, the results were statistically significant. This was further confirmation that the connection between geomagnetic activity and Amyr’s anomalies were not simply a fluke, and that such geomagnetic activity could help to explain the anomalies. For example, Amyr might be unconsciously motivated to manifest an anomaly, but the atmospheric environment might not be optimal.

The Apports

The apports that appeared anomalously included polished stones, coins, medallions, onyx jewelry, gemstones, and a pair of metallic linked rings. Laboratory tests identified some of the stones as agate, amethyst, a low-grade emerald, and a small diamond.

Many parapsychologists consider linked rings the “Holy Grail” of the field. It was unlikely that Amyr could have prepared them in advance because they appeared immediately after I mentioned their rarity. Our rules held that people could keep those apports that fell closest to them; as it happened, the linked rings fell at the feet of Harbans Lol Arora, who took them back to his university in Fortaleza, Brazil, and put them in a safety deposit box.

Another Return to Brasilia

Two years later, I met with Amyr and Pierre Weil in the latter’s office. Pierre asked Amyr if he could find an important book that had disappeared from his bookshelf. A blue-green rock cascaded onto the floor, leading Pierre to remark that the color was the same as the cover of the missing volume. I was called into another office to take a telephone call. While I was on the telephone, a polished stone fell at my feet. When I returned to Weil’s office, Weil informed me that the missing book had just reappeared in his bookcase. The color of the cover was identical to that of the rock.

One needs to keep alternative hypotheses in mind when investigating anomalous phenomena, including deception and sleight of hand. It would, however, be difficult to construct a scenario to explain the phenomena that occurred on this visit, much less on the others. There were phenomena occurring in two different rooms, one of which had not been previously foreseen. Another hypothesis would be that of deliberate or accidental prevarication; however, Michael Winkler, the student involved in the 1994 study, was extremely skeptical, being constantly on the lookout for ways in which deliberate or accidental prevarication could have occurred. Amyr and his brother were in the import business, so it would have been possible for him to take some of their stock, bring it to our sessions, and – by sleight of hand – surprisingly produce it.

But there were several spontaneous occurrences that would contradict that explanation. One night, as our group was having dinner with Amyr, our meal was interrupted by a thunderstorm. I noted that this was exactly the type of weather that would be conducive to apports and went outside, just in time to see a volley of small. polished stones cascade on the hood of a parked car. I dutifully picked them up and brought them back to our table, noting that thunderstorms seem to facilitate these and similar phenomena. On another occasion, Roberto Crema told Amyr that his daughter hoped he would give her a birthday present. Amyr asked how old Dr. Crema’s daughter was, and he replied “twelve.” Immediately, a small ring dropped out of nowhere, containing twelve small rhinestones.

Once I returned to the United States, a small foundation promised me a small grant for further work with Amyr. My Brazilian colleagues found two magicians who agreed to participate in the project. Pierre Weil conveyed this news to Amyr, who told him that his physician refused to let him take part in another study, insisting that his earlier work had been taxing to his system and that another foray might provoke a fatal heart attack. I could understand the rationale, even thought it would fuel the allegations that Amyr was simply a clever magician.

A French Coin

In 2015, I returned to UNIPAZ. Weil had died, and Roberto Crema had taken his place as Rector. The two of us were waiting for Amyr to arrive, just outside the UNIPAZ offices. When Amyr disembarked from his car, I asked if I could photograph him with my flash camera, to which he agreed. When the flash went off, a colorful coin fell onto the ground. Of recent vintage, it portrayed Joan of Arc.

As a staff member photographed the three of us, a polished stone appeared on the ground when the flash went off. During our meeting in a UNIPAZ office, a musky smell permeated the air. I noticed a pool of liquid and collected it in a tissue. Upon returning to the U.S., I gave the tissue to an expert on perfumery. She told me that the smell was reminiscent of a perfume that had originated in France and was popular in the early 1900’s. In retrospect, Roberto and I speculated that both may have been associated with Weil, with Amyr serving as a “medium,” a person who has contact with the deceased.

Amyr’s Final Apports

In October 2019, I returned to Brasilia to speak at the 30^th anniversary of UNIPAZ. I spoke several times and, on October 12, reviewed our earlier work with Amyr. I added that he did not use these phenomena to gain publicity, to make money, or to start a cult, but instead devoted himself to healing sick people. He probably knew that I would be in Brasilia but did not want to be part of the UNIPAZ celebration, because he was preoccupied with his work with lepers and other sick people.

During the celebration, I was given my own room adjoining the UNIPAZ offices, as were Andre Percia, a Brazilian psychologist and old friend, and Steve Speer, a new friend from New York City who had joined me for the trip. On October 14, Andre and I were among the guests at an elegant dinner party in a local home. All guests were given a gift box of candies when they left. Back in my room, eager to sample the candy, I tried to open the container. In the process, a small item fell to the floor, which I surmised was rock candy. I recall thinking that this gift was inappropriate for those recipients who have dental problems and did not attempt to retrieve it before going to bed.

On October 15, Andre came to my room to pick me up for breakfast. As he opened the door, a small, polished, purple stone fell to the floor. Andre commented that the stone was too large to have been wedged between the top of the door and its framework. I remarked that it looked like something Amyr would have done, so I located the item that had fallen to the floor the previous night: it was a small honey-colored crystal.

On October 17, I discussed “apports” at breakfast with Steve, Andre, and other friends, noting that the term is typically used to describe objects that seem to fall out of nowhere. In the evening, our group went to the market. I tried to fold my collapsible cane, but something seemed to be blocking the movement. When Steve folded the cane gently, a small, polished, black stone fell out. All the members of our group witnessed this and heard the stone hit the ground. I put it in a small container with the other apports.

On October 18, before we left Brasilia for another conference in Goiânia, a Brazilian city that I had long wanted to visit, Steve suggested that I check the container to see if all the apports were there. Indeed, they were ‒ but there was also a new apport, a clear crystal. We arrived in Goiânia for an international transpersonal psychology conference, leaving on the 21^st.

When I returned to California, I did not unpack immediately. I thought I had taken everything out of my suitcase, but, when I lifted it up to put it away, I heard a rattling sound. I opened the suitcase; it was completely empty except for a quartz crystal, the largest of the three anomalous crystals that I had collected on my trip. This was on October 25.

The following day, October 26, although I assumed that I had taken everything out of my computer case, when I opened it up to insert the computer (which I had been carrying with me in a smaller lightweight case), I found a 10-centavo Brazilian coin. I placed it in the container with the other five apports.

One could speculate that Andre, Steve, or both were playing tricks on me, and this possibility needs to be considered. However, it would be difficult for that scenario to explain the appearance of two additional apports, once I had returned to California.

Final Reflections

I have sent all the apports in my possession to the University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections. These archives contain other apports and related material and are available for scholarly investigations. In commenting on the “origin” of apports, Pierre Weil had posited three possibilities:

• They could leave one location, only to appear in another.

• They could be “carbon copies” of an object that remained in its own location.

• They could be materialized “thought forms,” created on the spot.

Of course, we did not rule out the possibility that they could have been the result of legerdemain, or that they were already at a given location but previously unobserved. I suspected that Amyr had contacted an “archetype” from the “collective unconscious” that both motivated him to manifest these phenomena and gave him the ability to do so.

In the meantime, our investigation produced a method of working with spontaneous anomalous perturbation, notably, the Anomalies Observation Scale (AOS), which can produce scores that can be correlated with both physiological and geomagnetic data. At the same time, descriptive material is important and can yield a complementary set of data.

Stigmata

When we were working with the AOS, the only events on which there was no consensus were in the form of Amyr’s stigmata. Pierre Weil gave them a score of 5, I gave them a score of 2, and a third judge, who varied from session to session, gave them a score somewhere in between. Later, I authored an article outlining my concept of stigmata and why I was giving them such a low score on the AOS. I wrote that stigmata are a peculiar phenomenon, in that they are the most radical confirmation of the uniquely Christian experience and concept of liturgical time, the reason being that Christianity affirms the historicity of the person of Christ. Without the figure of Christ and the series of anomalies that he represents, mainstream observers would assert that stigmata would be nothing more than a morbid aberration. A number of researchers have identified four commonalities among stigmatics:

1. The stigmatic has a history of somatization.

2. The stigmatic demonstrates a high degree of identification with a religious figure.

3. The bleeding occurs periodically during times of high affect.

4. There is considerable secondary gain derived from the stigmata.

The term “secondary gain” refers to advantages, often unconscious, that a person gets from having a symptom.

All four of these commonalities can be said to have characterized Amyr. He had a history of somatic complaints, as he noted in our discussions. He demonstrated a high degree of identification with Jesus Christ and other religious figures. The bleeding occurred when Amyr was deeply moved by a social situation or conversation. And, as a result of the stigmata, he received attention and praise from a group of his supporters as well as from inquisitive outsiders. However, he made no attempt to use this adulation for financial gain or for personal aggrandizement.

Amyr told us that these phenomena are not under his voluntary control, making investigation difficult. Nonetheless, we produced a collegial atmosphere that we felt would be conducive to their occurrence. The final set of phenomena, occurring in 2019, was completely unexpected; they may or may not have been related to my favorable assessment of Amyr’s motives as related in my presentation at UNIPAZ during its 30^th anniversary celebration.

In 2021, I was informed that Amyr had passed on. In honoring his memory, I do my best to talk and write about “The Strange Case of Amyr Amiden,” hoping that his cooperation with our research team will contribute to a deeper understanding of some of life’s mysteries, questions for which Amyr may now have the answers.

A wealth of anecdotal and clinical material exists which lends support to the possibility of extrasensory effects occurring in the dream phase of the sleep-wakefulness cycle. However, an experimental approach to the question of the parapsychological dream did not become possible until the advent of psychophysiological monitoring techniques. It was discovered that subjects awakened from periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep were frequently able to recall vivid visual dream episodes. Thus, for the first time, a telepathic sender (or “agent”) could program a target stimulus in any desired relationship to the recurrent episodes of REM activity during the course of a nighttime experiment.

Beginning in 1964, a series of experimental studies was inaugurated at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, to test the hypothesis that sleeping subjects are able to incorporate aspects of randomly selected target stimuli into their dreams. Not only have the majority of the formal experimental series yielded statistically significant results, but an analysis of 83 pilot sessions completed between 1964 and 1969 produced data confirming the telepathy hypothesis.

Art prints have been used as stimuli for these experiments because of their ability to maintain the attention of individuals and to move them emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually. The art prints selected contain archetypal themes, imply strong emotional feeling, and utilize vivid color - the elements often found to characterize those parapsychological dreams which are reported anecdotally and clinically.

PILOT SESSION

Telepathy is one of several forms of extra-sensory perception (ESP) often referred to as mind-to-mind communication.

To investigate the possible effect that a large number of agents would have in a telepathy study, a pilot session was arranged for March 15, 1970. The entire audience at a concert served as agents. The music at the concert was provided by The Holy Modal Rounders, a rock-and-roll group. Target preparation was handled by Jean Mayo, who coordinated the slide program with The Lidd Light Company, a group of lumia artists in charge of the light show which accompanied the music. Ms. Mayo gave the audience brief verbal directions before the target was revealed. The target material was designated as “Birds.”

Visual sequences were prepared for one movie projector and six slide projectors. A color film about eagles and their nesting habits was shown on the movie projector. The slide programs for the slide projectors featured American birds, African birds, various photographs of seagulls, words about birds (e.g., “Think Birds,” “Fly High”), bird symbols (e.g., the Egyptian hieroglyph for “bird”), and a polarized slide of a phoenix which appeared and disappeared in flames as the polarizer was moved. The Holy Modal Rounders played the song, “If You Want to be a Bird,” while the film and slides were shown to the audience.

There were five volunteer subjects for this study, all located within a 100-mile radius of the concert location in Manhattan. All subjects were told the location of the concert and were directed to record their images at 12:00 midnight, at which time the target material was exposed.

One subject, Helen A., had the impression of “something mythological, like a Griffin or a Phoenix, or something.” A second subject, Michael B., reported the image of “a snake.” Doug C., the third subject, reported a recurring image of “grapes.” I was subject number four, visualizing “an embryo in flames, growing into a tree.”

Richie Havens, the celebrated American singer and recording artist, was the fifth subject. Upon closing his eyes at the appointed time, Mr. Havens reported visualizing “a number of seagulls flying over water.” Both Mr. Havens’ image and that of Helen A. represented direct correspondences with the target material, while my report represented a partial correspondence.

In reviewing the methodology used in this pilot session, it was decided to make the directions to the audience more explicit and to tell them the location of at least one subject—something not done in the pilot session—during the subsequent use of multiple telepathy agents. It was also decided to randomly select the target material just before it was revealed to the audience so as to eliminate the possibility of sensory leakage through conscious or unconscious collusion or fraud.

METHOD

For the six-night study, an attempt was made to use a large number of telepathic agents in a situation which would involve some of the emotional intensity which characterizes spontaneous instances of telepathic transmission. The entire audience attending concerts by The Grateful Dead, a rock-and-roll musical group, was instructed to telepathically transmit an art print which was randomly selected just before it was projected on a screen above the musical group while they were performing.

One of the laboratory staff members (Ronald Suarez) selected fourteen 2“ by 2” slides of art prints that satisfied the requirements previously stated. He randomly selected two of these slides and gave them to an experimenter (Ronnie Mastrion) the night of each concert. The slides were sealed in separate opaque envelopes. The staff member (Suarez) marked one envelope “heads” and the other “tails.” At 11:30 P.M. each night, the experimenter (Mastrion) tossed a coin and noted whether it read “heads” or “tails.” This determined which envelope he opened and which slide he projected for the audience.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Such art prints were utilized as “The Seven Spinal Chakras,” by the Armenian artist Scralian (Figure 1), ‘The Castle of The Pyrenees” by the French artist Magritte (Figure 2), ”Philosophy in the Boudoir” by Magritte (Figure 3) , and “A Synthetic Emblematic Cross” by Scralian (Figure 4).

Duplicate copies of the slides were put aside for later evaluation by two judges who were not present at any of the sessions.

SETTING

The six concerts involved in this experiment were held at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, approximately 45 miles from the Dream Laboratory. Music from a Grateful Dead album had figured prominently in a previous ESP experiment at the laboratory.

The Grateful Dead began performing in 1964 and are one of the originators of “acid-rock” or “the San Francisco Sound.” The group played for Ken Kesey’s “Acid Tests” in La Honda, California, and participated in the early “Trips Festivals,” the “Monterey Pop Festival,” and the “First Family Dog Dances” in San Francisco. Jerry Garcia, a member of the group, describes how the name originated:

Back in the late days of the Acid Tests, we were looking for a name. We’d abandoned The Warlocks; it didn’t fit anymore. One day, we were all over at Phil Lesh’s house smoking DMT. He had a big Oxford dictionary, opened it, and there was “grateful dead,” those words juxtaposed. It was one of those moments, y’know, like everything else on the page went blank, diffuse, just sorta oozed away, and there was GRATEFUL DEAD, big black letters edged all around in gold, man, blasting out at me, such a stunning combination. So, I said, “How about Grateful Dead?”, and that was it.”

Early in their careers, each member of the group tried LSD. In 1966, the group lived in Los Angeles for three months with Augustus Owsley Stanley III, the legendary supplier of the black market’s highest quality LSD and innovative sound engineer. They returned to San Francisco in mid-1966 and lived as a psychedelic musical commune for a period of time, releasing (between 1967 and 1969) several records, parts of which were consciously designed to be played while the listener is in an altered state of consciousness. In 1967, following a raid by narcotics officers, the group abandoned its San Francisco commune and began living in separate houses in the country.

The group’s basic sound can be described as hard rock, rhythm-and-blues, which also includes electronic, classical, country-and-western, Indian, “accidental” music, jazz, and folk music. Members of the group often attribute their open attitude toward various musical forms to psychedelic experience, which “does away with old forms,” allowing them to create “music beyond idiom.” Bob Weir, the group’s youngest member, told me that he had not taken LSD in large doses for several years. He does not regret his drug experiences but stated, “I think that I would have ended up at the same place even without acid.”

The eclectic nature of the group and its music is also to be found among its performers. Micky Hart, for example, an Air Force veteran and jazz drummer, recalled that he was “stoned out of my mind” when he first heard the group in 1967. He jammed twice with the other drummer and asked Jerry Garcia if he could sit in with the group during an appearance at San Francisco’s Straight Theatre. Hart says, “We finished, and the crowd went wild. Jerry came over and embraced me, and I embraced him, and it’s been like that ever since.”

Hart learned to play in Oriental meters. He told me he refers to the basic rock four-four beat as a “box” and has devised highly complicated patterns that he and Bill Kreutzman, the other drummer, synchronize, sometimes by hypnotically-induced altered states of consciousness, that I facilitated.

It was Jerry Garcia who suggested the dream telepathy experiment to me, noting that his group would be performing for six nights at a nearby theater, providing a unique opportunity for the experiment.

The group has developed a style often described as “black satanic,” personifying a “horror comic monster who, besides being green and slimy, happens also to have seven different heads, a 190 IQ, countless decibels of liquid fire noise, communication, and is coming right down to where you are to gobble you up.” This image stems, in large part, from the group’s association, from its earliest days, with LSD, marijuana, and psychedelic experience.

SUBJECTS

Two “psychic sensitives,” Malcolm Bessent and Felicia Parise, served as subjects for this study. Both had participated in previous studies of extrasensory effects at the Maimonides Medical Center Dream Laboratory.

Mr. Bessent’s dreams were monitored by standard psychophysiological techniques at the laboratory. Ms. Parise slept at her apartment; she was telephoned from time to time during the night and asked for dream recall. Further, the audience at the Capitol Theater was told about Mr. Bessent’s participation in the experiment, but was not informed as to Ms. Parise. The difference in treatment between the two subjects was arranged so as to explore the influence of intentionality by the agents. If it is important in telepathy experiments that the agents know who they are transmitting messages to, one would have expected Mr. Bessent to do better than Ms. Parise. However, if telepathy basically involves a “reaching out” for the target picture on the part of the subject, with little or no effort needed on the part of the agent, one would have expected Ms. Parise to do as well as Mr. Bessent.

PROCEDURE

Mr. Bessent arrived at the Dream Laboratory at approximately 10:00 P.M. each evening so as to be asleep at 11:30 P.M. when the audience was exposed to the target material. Ms. Parise retired at about the same time.

Each of the six concerts was attended by about 2,000 people. Further, it was apparent to observers at the concert that the majority of the people in the audience were in states of consciousness that had been dramatically altered by the time the slide was presented. These altered states of consciousness were brought about by the music, by the ingestion of psychedelic drugs before the concerts started, and by contact with other members of the audience. At 11:30 PM, the following six-slide sequence was projected on a large screen:

1. YOU ARE ABOUT TO PARTICIPATE IN AN ESP EXPERIMENT.

2. IN A FEW SECONDS YOU WILL SEE A PICTURE.

3. TRY USING YOUR ESP TO “SEND” THIS PICTURE TO MALCOLM BESSENT.

4. HE WILL TRY TO DREAM ABOUT THE PICTURE.

TRY TO “SEND” IT TO HIM.

5. MALCOLM BESSENT IS NOW AT THE MAIMONIDES DREAM LABORATORY IN BROOKLYN.

6. At this point, the randomly selected art print was projected on the screen.

The Grateful Dead continued to play while the slides were projected. Between numbers, they occasionally made comments regarding the experiment and the slides, thus drawing the audience’s attention specifically to the material. The art print was projected for 15 minutes. As there was no “light show” on any of the six nights, the experimental material served as the only projected visual stimulus during the concert.

Mr. Bessent’s sleep was monitored by standard electroencephalogram-electrooculogram techniques. Following about 10 minutes of REM activity, Mr. Bessent was awakened, asked for his dream report, and told him to go back to sleep. In the morning, Mr. Bessent was asked to give associations to each dream. Mr. Bessent’s dream reports were recorded on tape, sent to a typist, and subsequently transcribed.

Ms. Parise was telephoned at approximately 90-minute intervals during the night. Her dream reports were written down by an experimenter. The following morning, Ms. Parise went over the dream reports, adding any pertinent details which had been omitted previously. She also gave associations to each of her dreams.

EVALUATION

Evaluation was accomplished by giving two judges (Michael Bova and David Powlison) all six transcripts for each subject, as well as all six art prints actually used. The judges worked independently and had no contact with each other, with the subjects, or with the staff members who had been at the laboratory on the nights of the experiments. Each judge read the subject’s transcripts and looked at the art prints. On a 100-point scale, he made a mark describing the degree of correspondence between the dreams and the art prints. When he finished, he had made a total of 36 evaluations for Mr. Bessent and another 36 for Ms. Parise.

The average evaluation of the two judges was computed for each pair of dream transcripts and target pictures. If coincidence, rather than ESP, had been operating, the judges’ evaluation of the correct transcript-target pairs would have been higher than all other pairs one time out of six.

For Ms. Parise, one correct pair obtained the highest rating. In the case of Mr. Bessent, the judges gave the highest scores to the correct pairs four times out of six. This distribution produces a critical ratio of 2.449, which is statistically significant at the p=.0124 level in a two-tailed test. When ranks were used instead of ratings, the statistical probability of getting four out of six correct hits if the descriptions were random is p < .008, easily surpassing the traditional levels of significance.

Thus, for Mr. Bessent, the ESP hypothesis is supported. Further, some support is given to the position that the agents must know who the target is to be transmitted to and where he is located for telepathy to occur.

EXAMPLES

On the night of February 19, 1971, “The Seven Spinal Chakras” was randomly selected as the target picture. This painting shows a man in the lotus position practicing yogic meditation. All seven “chakras” (energy centers of the body, centered around the spinal column) are vividly colored. Excerpts from Mr. Bessent’s dreams follow:

I was very interested in using natural energy.

I was talking to this guy who said he’d invented a way of using solar energy, and he showed me this box... to catch the light from the sun, which was all we needed to generate and store the energy. I was discussing with this other guy a number of other areas of communication, and we were exchanging ideas on the whole thing . He was suspended in mid-air or something . . . . I was thinking about rocket ships. I’m remembering a dream I had about an energy box and a spinal column.

On several other nights, Mr. Bessent’s dream reports demonstrated a degree of correspondence with the target pictures. For example, on February 20, 1971, Magritte’s surrealistic painting, “Philosophy in the Boudoir,” was randomly selected; it portrays a headless woman dressed in a transparent gown. Mr. Bessent dreamed about “a little girl’s doll” and a “fantasy” about a “stop- watch on a card around my neck.”

CONCLUSION

Mr. Bessent’s results were statistically significant, and Ms. Parise’s were not; several possibilities for this difference should be considered. Of importance is the fact that on each of six nights, the 2,000 members of the concert audience were exposed to Mr. Bessent’s name and were instructed to “send” the image of the target picture to the Maimonides Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn. Ms. Parise’s name was not exposed to the audience, and she was not located at the Dream Laboratory. Thus, it is likely that the results of this experiment demonstrate the necessity of agent orientation; in other words, the telepathic “sender” must know the purpose of the experiment in order to contribute to the parapsychological effect.

Two alternative, or at least contributory, explanations must also be considered. It may have been that during the time of the experiment, Mr. Bessent’s telepathic abilities were more sensitive than those of Ms. Parise. If so, Mr. Bessent would have done better regardless of the other procedures. In addition, it must be remembered that Mr. Bessent was awakened after REM activity in a laboratory. Ms. Parise was awakened by telephone, and some of her dreams may not have been remembered. (Despite this situation, Ms. Parise reported more dreams than Mr. Bessent.)

In any event, the fact remains that one of the two subjects in this experiment produced results which were statistically significant and which demonstrated his ability to receive impressions of a randomly selected target picture 45 miles distant. The experimental situation was tightly controlled; thus, extrasensory perception is the most likely explanation of the results. As the target picture was 45 miles from the subjects, the possibility of sensory cues can be eliminated. As 2,000 people saw the randomly selected target each night, the possibility of fraud due to the substitution of a target picture seems unlikely. This experiment does not prove that 2,000 agents are better than a single agent; future work is needed to explore this intriguing possibility.

Original publication:

Krippner, Stanley, Honorton, Charles, and Ullman, Montague. (1973). An Experiment in Dream Telepathy with “The Grateful Dead.” Journal of the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 9-17.

For tribal shamans, nature was sacred; Earth was alive and special, spots were engulfed with “power,” filled with “energy,” or inhabited by “spirits.” Although soil, water, and air all partook of the divine, some spots were especially numinous, and these sacred places were visited by shamans for renewal, communication with the “other world,” or entry to altered states of consciousness. Shamans, both past and present, were socially designated practitioners who voluntarily altered their consciousness to enter the “other world,” bringing back knowledge that they used to serve the needs of their community. Shamans were exceptionally sensitive to what biologist Rene DuBois referred to as “the spirit of place.”

Many Shamans regarded the Earth as their mother. There were hills that looked like breasts, crags that looked like faces, rivers that could have been life-giving milk. But the concept of Mother Earth was not universal; each indigenous culture worked out its pantheon of deities in its own way, albeit with frequent interactions with other cultures. Mother Earth was given visibility in North America by the Wanapum prophet Smohalla and the Shawnee cultural leader Tecumseh, although it had much earlier roots in the Pocahontas myth. However, many Native American tribes do not have a maternal Earth deity, even though they have long traditions of respect for nature and care for the land.

In Ancient Egypt, Geb was the Earth Father. All the world’s vegetation sprouted from Geb’s back as he was lying on his stomach, prone. The Algonquin Indians worshipped Nokomis, the Earth Mother, and believed that all living things fed from her bosom. Balkan peasants considered Earth each person’s parent and spouse, dressing the corpse for a wedding before burying it. Indeed, the first people to develop skills in the healing arts held a special reverence for Earth Deities, whether they were male, female, or both. Animism was a perspective that saw nature as alive and sacred; it was associated with hunting-and- gathering tribes, especially those in the Old and Middle Stone Ages (i.e., Paleolithic and Mesolithic Ages). Totemism, an evolved strand of animism, conceptualized various animal species as related to particular clans. For the mythologist Joseph Campbell, the bear skull sanctuaries of Paleolithic times provide the earliest evidence of the veneration of a divine being. Shamanism was associated with both animism and totemism and has been called “applied animism.”

Many contemporary writers refer to the living planet Earth as “Gaia,” pointing out that active feedback processes operate to keep Earth’s temperature, oxidation state, and acidity constant while solar energy sustains comfortable conditions for life. The Gaia concept is the most recent in a long tradition of perspectives that views Earth as a living organism whose capabilities include the ability to bear, sustain, and heal human beings.

This is a far different worldview than that held by the Europeans who conquered the Americas. Despite the evidence of long-established city-based civilizations like those of the Inca, the Aztec, and the Maya, European settlers regarded Native Americans as people with no real homes. This provided justification for “civilizing” the Indians“ for their own good” into ordered communities.

No other approach could save as many souls, and no other approach could further the territorial and economic interests of the conquerors. The invaders overlooked the architectural accomplishments of Native Americans, such as building their homes in concert with nature rather than in opposition to nature, placing doorways towards the east where the sun rose, and devising floor plans so that when people awoke, they would feel as though they had been reborn.

The Healing Earth and Treatment Practices

Pablo Amaringo was a contemporary shaman who has made a considerable effort to preserve the Amazonian ecosystem. Over the years, Amaringo has utilized a powerful mind-altering brew, ayahuasca, in his work and painted several of his ayahuasca visions. A book containing forty-nine of these paintings presents hundreds of animals, plants, spirits, and mythological beings. Journeys to various underwater, subterranean, and outer-space worlds are graphically detailed in these paintings.

After retiring as a healer, Amaringo organized an art school in Pucallpa, Peru, dedicated to documenting the ways of Amazonian life. The school’s philosophy is the education of local youths in the care and preservation of the Amazonian ecosystem.

The concept of the healing Earth has entered into treatment procedures used by indigenous shamans and other magico-religious practitioners since prehistoric times. For example, the central element in the Navajo healing ceremony is sand painting. This painting represents, simultaneously, the spiritual and physical landscape in which the patients and their transgressions exist, as well as the etiology of the disease and the mythic meaning of the procedure that has been chosen for its cure. Stones, plants, and sacred objects are often placed inside the painting. Mythological relationships among the elements are represented in colored sand. The sand figures may be clouds, or snakes, or whatever is needed to portray the path of the disease as it proceeds through time and space.

Dangers and diseases have their place in the matrix as well; if they have been the cause of illness or misfortune, they alone can correct it. Chanting, drumming, and a vigil bring the elements together. Patients become aware of the pattern of their sickness and their life, and how both are joined in the cosmos. Usually, patients are surrounded by their friends, neighbors, and relatives who sing and pray for that purpose. A variation of the sand painting is the ground painting constructed by the Southern California Diegueno Indians during the puberty ritual of young tribesmen. They convey the design of their world by representing the horizon as a circle. Also included are the world’s edge, various heavenly bodies, power animals (especially the crow, coyote, snake, and wolf), and the mortar and pestle used to grind the mind-altering plants used in these ceremonies.

Some psychohistorians believe that the placenta is represented in these Indian medicine wheels, both in the temporary sand and ground paintings and in the longer-lasting constructions, of which about fifty still exist in the western parts of the United States and Canada. These structures are composed of stones placed on the ground to form a small central circle, with lines of stones radiating outward; sometimes there is an outer circle around the circumference.

Used for ceremonies involving renewal and rebirth, some of the medicine wheels are said to “look more like placenta than any other religious symbols derived from intra-uterine life, including the tree of life, the pagan cross, and the sacred pole.” Medicine lodges are built each summer by the Plains Indians for sacred ceremonies; these lodges feature a central tree or pole, often with as many rafters as the medicine wheels have lines of stones. Although these designs could also emulate the sun, anthropologist R.B. McFarland says that he favors the placenta as the origin of the sacred circle. Everyone starts life dependent on their placenta for nourishment and life’s blood, long before we see the sun, and the sun doesn’t have a central pole. The circle and the tree of life are both symbols of the placenta, the umbilical cord, and the network of blood vessels resembling the roots and branches of a tree.

I found a similar concern in the songs of Maria Sabina, the Mazatec Indian shaman I interviewed in 1980 and whose sacred mushroom veladas were recorded and transcribed before her death. Many of her verses reveal her close association with nature:

Living Mother…,

Mother of Sap, Mother of the dew…,

Mother who gave birth to us…,

Green Mother, budding Mother…,

These are my children…,

These are my babies…,

These are my offshoots…,

My buds…,

I am only asking, examining…,

About his business as well…,
I begin in the depth of the water…,

I begin where the primordial sounds forth…,

When the sacred sounds forth…,

I am a little woman who goes through the water…,

I am a little woman who goes through the stream…,

I bring my light…,

Ah, Jesus Christ…,

Medicinal herbs and sacred herbs of Christ…,

I’m going to thunder…,

I’m going to play music…,

I’m going to shout…,

I’m going to whistle…,

It is a matter of tenderness, a matter of clarity…,

There is no resentment…,

There is no rancor…,

There is no argument…,

There is no anger…,

It is life and well-being…,

It is a matter of sap…,

It is a matter of dew…,

These excerpts from several of Maria Sabina’s songs reveal a woman who reveres the Mother who gives birth to us, a woman who has entered the primordial waters of oceanic consciousness, but who does not stay there. The true nature of her consciousness is oriented toward service, toward healing, toward her community, and toward the children and babies to whom she strives to bring life and well-being. For her, the human being is a part of the natural world and must join its quest for life and well-being.

In general, North American Indians felt that nature-in-movement had magical power, hence the importance given to the Deer Dance by the Huichols, the Buffalo Dance by the Hopis, and the Sun Dance by the Plains Indians. The Naniamo shamanic apprentices of Vancouver Island believed that their tutors were mythical monsters rather than the animal spirits who assisted other members of their tribe. When I visited the Cuna Indians of Panama in 1985, I observed a dance in which each tribal member moved to the spirit of his or her power animals, bringing the energy and knowledge from the “other world” into communal activity.

The Nature of Sacred Places

Some locations in what shamans call Middle Earth are held to be more sacred than others. Shamans frequently locate “power spots” and use them in their healing ceremonies. These are the areas that are said to contain more “energy” and “vital force” than surrounding geographic locations. Taking the position that “ancient peoples are still offering us their wisdom through their sacred sites and landscapes,” mythologist Paul Devereux has found that they differentiated between the physical landscape as constituted by consensual agreements, i.e., the ordinary reality of the world, and the visionary landscape of the human mind.

For example, the Balinese language contains a well-developed sensibility of dual words (niskala and sekala). But English can only call the alternative visionary world “symbolic,” at best. By whatever name it is called, Devereux suggests that a rediscovery of the human capacity to “see” as the ancients could “see,” would assist residents of industrialized societies to understand that the existence of these other landscapes rests essentially on one’s willingness to believe in them. Devereux does not simply dismiss the phenomenon of the symbolic reality as existing only in the imagination; he also documents the presence of naturally magnetic stones at a variety of recognized sacred spots and presents reasonable explanations for the verified presence of strange bright lights at some “power spots.” The nearby magnetic stones could have been employed both for healing work and for altering people’s consciousness.

The well-preserved Neolithic landscape of Avebury in southern England is undeniably recognized as having been a ceremonial landscape for its ancient inhabitants. It follows from Devereux’s argument that it was also a landscape of the mind. This is only one example of the legacy that Devereux believes native people left the world in their sacred sites and landscapes.

A contemporary example of such a site is given by Alfonso Ortiz, who, as a child in his Pueblo village, had a vision that was directed to the mountaintop, the place where the paths of the living and the dead were said to converge. Ortiz recalled:

A wise elder among my people, the Tewa, frequently … smiled and said, “Whatever life’s challenges you may face, remember always to look to the mountaintop; in doing so, you look to greatness. Remember this, and let no problem, however great it may seem, discourage you …” Although he knew I was too young to understand, he also knew there was not much time left to impart this message to me and, perhaps, to others like me. In accordance with our beliefs, the ancestors were waiting for him at the edge of the village the day before he died, waiting to take him on a final four-day journey to the four sacred mountains of the Tewa world. A Tewa must either be a medicine man in a state of purity, or he must be dead before he can safely ascend the sacred mountain.

Ortiz’s statement implies that shaman can utilize sacred geographical spots such as the mountaintop. These spots are also the places where tribal “ancestors” can be found by the shaman and consulted in times of need. James Swan has reviewed more than one hundred case histories of people having unusual experiences at power spots, and he observes that the most common experiences reported were feelings of ecstasy, unification with nature, interspecies communication, waking visions, profound dreams, the ability to seemingly influence the weather, feeling unusual “energies,” and hearing words, voices, music, and songs.

One explanation of the nature of sacred places can be found in the creation myth of the Hopi Indian tribe. In the beginning, it is told, Tiowa, the Creator, saw a need to assign a guardian for Earth, and he gave the position to a wise old woman named Spider Grandmother. Descending to Earth, Spider Grandmother saw that she would need help with her task as a steward. She reached down, picked up two handfuls of soil, and spit into each of them. From each hand sprang a handsome young man. The three sat quietly in meditation for a time, attuning their minds to that of Tiowa.

The other, Palongwhoya, wearing an equally spectacular costume of fiery red, carried a drum with him as he was sent to the South Pole. When Palongwhoya reached the South Pole, he sat in meditation for a time, reaching his heart-mind out into the universe. When he heard the heartbeat of Tiowa, he began to imitate that rhythm on his drum, creating a harmony.

Whenever two or more things come into harmony, energy is exchanged, and so Palongwhoya’s drum directed energy from the heart of the Creator into the Earth through the drum beat. This stream of life-force energy coursed downward to the very center of the Earth. Striking the center, they radiated outward again, like the seeds of a dandelion. As they emerged from the Earth’s crust, they were more concentrated at some places than at others. These places are the strongest sacred places, known to the Hopis as the “spots on the fawn”, places of light as on the back of a young deer.

The Exploitation of the Living Earth

Some contemporary humans claim that their needs permit them to ravage nature. As former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Manuel Lujan, Jr., stated, “I think that God gave us dominion over these creatures.” Lujan also remained unconvinced that every species needs to be preserved, saying “Nobody’s told me the difference between a red squirrel, a black one, or a brown one.”

I was present during a San Francisco interview on May 8, 1992, when former soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev took a different position:

“We must continue to move ahead on this issue in the spirit of innovative thinking. The destruction of the environment is a dramatic problem. We need to work toward a single global vision. For example, the Siberian taiga and the Amazonian rainforest are the twin lungs of the planet. In our new Foundation, we have a Center for Global Problems devoted to these issues. This is a global problem, and it must be solved with global approaches.”

This vision of the living Earth is also implicit in the work of Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock. In studying genetic transportation, she focused on corn (a sacred food to many Native American tribes), working with nature to determine how genetic structures respond to the needs of the organism. In commenting on her work, biographer E. F. Keller states that nature is on the side of scientists like McClintock, although her underlying philosophy alarmed her peers (especially the male geneticists) and relegated her to the periphery of genetic research for many decades. Mythologist Elizabeth Sahtouris observed how Earth’s relatively constant temperature and chemical balance are favorable to life. For her, Earth means the biological definition of a living organism: a self-producing, self-renewing system. Earth is the only planet in its solar system that has the right size, density, composition, fluidity of elements, and the “right distancing and balancing of energy with its sun star and satellite moon to come alive and stay so.” Mythologist Carlene Spretnak adds that on the smaller celestial bodies, the electromagnetic interactions overpowered gravity’s pull; on larger ones, the opposite relationship developed. Only on Earth were the two in balance.

Western scientists and philosophers who agree with the shamanic conception of Earth as a living being are in a minority. But they, in concert with indigenous people, call for awareness and sensitivity among human beings regarding the balance that must be maintained. The ancient Greeks believed that in the beginning, there was darkness, personified by the god Chaos. Then appeared Gaia, the Earth goddess.

Western cultures have used their technology to insulate themselves from any limitations imposed by nature. Spretnak contends that the Western stance has been that if societies let their guard down, they would again be engulfed by chaos. But this is a misreading of nature and a dysfunctional mythology; humankind’s destruction is more likely if the living, healing Earth is ignored.

THE SHOWBIZ PSYCHOLOGIST

He was a showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

The students thought he was just fine.

A showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

To get selfies they stood in a line.

A showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

His jail study was quite a doozy,

And it was made into a movie!

A showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

And he worked with some students of mine

To concoct a therapy based on time.

A showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

With his own reputation iron-clad.

Phil wrote about what makes people bad.

A showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

Among so many stories to tell,

Phil brought shy people out of their shell.

A showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

Don’t let your life count as a zero,

Phil taught how you can be a hero.

A showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

To make sure psychology was seen

He put it all on the TV screen.

A showbiz psychologist, just a showbiz psychologist,

Phil lived quite a passionate life,

He loved jazz, his kids, and his wife.

He was a showbiz psychologist.

Just a showbiz psychologist,

He liked everyone who he met.

He was a showbiz psychologist.

Just a showbiz psychologist,

And we are all in his debt.

CODA
Every Sunday, the CBS Show “Good Morning America” posts an “Almanac” of recent deaths, typically people from business, politics, and show business. When Phil passed, his name appeared, followed by the descriptor “Psychologist.” Indeed, he was the Showbiz Psychologist to the end!

The term “archetype” predated Jung, but he used it to refer to themes that were biological in nature, the result of evolution. As such, they had survival value, serving as a type of shorthand to help people navigate their way through life. Archetypes represent fundamental human experiences, which is why their appearance in myths and stories from one culture resonates with people in other cultures.

Examples in advertising:

• The Creator, e.g., Logo blocks.

• The Ruler, e.g., Rolex watches, Mercedes-Benz

• The Sage, e.g., Google

• The Explorer, e.g., National Geographic

• The Lover, e.g., Dove candies’ emphasis on sharing

• The Hero, e.g., Nike running shoes.

• The Caregiver, e.g., Johnson and Johnson band-aids.

• The Outlaw, e.g., Harley-Davidson motorcycles

Archetypes can be seen in films, theater, and literature, especially those that have cross-cultural appeal.

• The Hero’s Journey, e.g., Indiana Jones films, the Star Wars films, and The Wizard of Oz.

• The Warrior, e.g., Saving Private Ryan, and the Gladiator films.

• The Star-Crossed Lovers, e.g., Romeo and Juliet

• The Rebirth. e.g., A Christmas Carol.

• The Shadow, e.g., Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

• The Castaway. Rebel Without a Cause. The Joker, Little Orphan Annie.

Archetypes can be expressed in symbols (an image that has a deeper meaning) such as the Mandala, the fleur de lys, the breastfeeding Mother, the Star of David, the Christian Cross, the Muslim Crescent, the Hammer and the Sickle, or a coat of arms.

They can also be expressed in metaphors (a series of images that have a deeper meaning) such as the hero’s journey, the magical flight, a resurrection, the tutor and the student, and the alchemical transformation.

Jung cited the most important dream archetypes as the Self, the persona, the shadow, and the animus or anima—one’s traits of the opposite gender, often suppressed. Renee Nell, a Jungian analyst, proposed that each person has both an animus and an anima, an insight prescient in today’s flurry of non-cisgender people, including those who identify as transgender.

Archetypal dreams are about the same as what Patricia Garfield called Universal Dreams and what Kelley Bulkeley called Big Dreams. They differ from ordinary dreams in that they are highly emotional and have more than one layer of meaning.

By making connections with the archetypes in the collective unconscious, dreamers can utilize a type of shorthand—an image (symbol) or series of images (metaphors) that may be brief but deep in meaning. It is no wonder that Jung often sent his patients to the library to do mythological and historical research concerning the archetypes in their dreams.

Jeffrey had frequent anxiety attacks and could not concentrate on his daily tasks. One night, he had this dream: “I am lost in a dark forest. I have no idea how to find a road, and I keep wandering aimlessly. Then I see a small house, and a kind lady invites me in for a cup of tea. I enjoy the tea, and then she takes me along a road and gives me directions as to how to get home.” Upon awakening from the dream, Jeffrey made an appointment to see a psychotherapist.

Marie had a series of dreams on the same theme. She recalled, “I was at a large airport trying to find the right terminal for my flight. But once I found it, my flight had already left. I felt terribly upset.” Marie reflected on how her indecision in waking life had resulted in missing some promising opportunities and decided to be more decisive in the future.

The most common dreams worldwide all contain archetypes.

• Snakes (the most common dream)

• Falling but not landing

• Being chased

• Losing teeth

• Being naked in public

• Cheating (or being cheated)

• Pets (usually dogs or cats)

• Money

Each has the potential for multiple interpretations.

The Pearson 12 Element Archetype Indicator identifies archetypes in individuals, and the IBM Kenex Organizational Cultural Insight Survey does the same for organizations and cultures. Both have been used in research studies, and the former can be found online for those who want to discover their archetypes. Jungians would insist that they might be of interest, but are no substitute for psychoanalysis.

Archetypes are the basis for MyMythos, a system developed by Sidian M.S. Jones, who has written two illustrated books, one on animal archetypes and the other on color archetypes.

Jung felt that archetypes have a biological basis, resulting from experiences that have evolutionary survival value and are lodged in the collective unconscious. This would explain their cross-cultural impact and appeal.

The Time Cure, by Zimbardo, Sword, and Sword, is a manual describing “Time Focused Therapy,” an empirically validated treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Here is a case study showing how it was used successfully.

Jamie, not his real name, joined the US Army after graduating from high school, where he had received excellent grades. Although Jamie wanted to continue his education and had received an academic scholarship from a nearby college, his parents could not afford the additional tuition and expenses. Jamie enlisted so he could attend university on the GI bill. Jamie once he had completed his service.

Four years later, after two years in Iraq and several close encounters with firefights in which some of his friends and colleagues were killed or maimed, he returned home and finally enrolled in college. Jamie had been a bright and enthusiastic student in high school, but now he had difficulty focusing. At the end of his first semester, he dropped out of school due to falling grades. Jamie knew that his time in the military had changed him, and not for the better. He recently realized that he had missed 2 vital elements in civilian life: the unique camaraderie that he had with his brothers in arms and the adrenaline rush of living amid danger. Jamie thought about civilian service-oriented organizations such as the fire or police departments; perhaps they might offer the camaraderie and excitement that he was missing. The local fire departments were not expecting recruits, but the Police Department had some openings. Well, at the police Academy, Marissa, a pseudonym and fellow candidate, was taken by James pensive mood and good looks, pursued him, and a romantic relationship commenced. Upon graduation they married and before long had a baby.

A triggering event.

One day, while Marissa was on leave, Jamie was called as a backup for a dangerous situation involving an active shooter in a low income neighborhood. During the incident Jamie underwent a, on the job, psychological breakdown. In his mind, the present had evaporated and had been replaced with a firefight that Jamie had experienced in Iran. His fellow law enforcement officers suddenly became his platoon buddies. The active shooter turned into an Iraqi insurgent. What the another police officer noted was, that while crouching behind a wall, Jamie was shaking uncontrollably and sweating profusely, he had been called by a different name. He told Jamie to stay put while he called headquarters. Jamie was admitted to the psychological psychiatric ward at the local hospital, and put on paid leave. Dturing his time he told the psychiatrist he was suffering from suicidal thoughts. After a few weeks of intensive therapy, he was released under the condition that he would continue seeing a psychiatrist for medication and psychological psychic psychiatric therapy. Jamie was to remain on leave until he had either been cleared by both practitioners, and was deemed fit to serve in the Police Department.

Jamie’s time perspective.

Richard Sword was convinced by the chief of police, and asked Jamie to be a client. While not knowing much about Jamie’s background as a veteran, they felt TPT might help the young officer. Rosemary Sword was the co-therapist for Jamie, and gave us permission to use his story.

Session 1. During his first session, Jamie mentioned that he had several tours in Iraq before becoming a police officer. The Swords suspected he had some form of post-traumatic stress syndrome and gave him psychological tests that diagnosed him with depression anxiety, and PTSD.

Session 2. The test results were explained. Jamie’s stress was so severe that he definitely had PTSD. The therapist told him that the recent incident as a police officer had triggered him. Jamie described the triggering incident and realized that he had been experiencing PTSD since he returned home. The symptoms had worsened since he joined the police force, married, and had a child.

Session 3. The third session was devoted to Jamie’s military service contact, especially the coma, the life threatening firefight, and past negative experiences. Jamie had an excellent memory and was prompted to relive these experiences in as much detail as he could manage. At the end of these exhausting sessions the therapist encouraged self-care, such as listening to soothing music, engaging in meditation, and recalling positive memories, such as experiences with family and friends, playing sports, riding horses in the countryside, hiking his favorite trails, and swimming in the ocean. When past negative thoughts arose, Jamie was told to immediately replace them with these past positive memories.

Session 4. During the fourth session, while sharing how he was doing at the present time, Jamie admitted to having suicidal thoughts. In TPT this is called extreme present fatalism. Jamie volunteered that he owned a gun and thought that if he were to kill himself, he would probably do it with the weapon. He was not sure that he really loved Marissa and felt she had pressured him into marriage and having a child. He did not know if he could keep up with their house payments. In addition to feeling overwhelmed with responsibility, he now realized that his time in Iraq had left him with extreme post-traumatic stress.

Deeply concerned with Jamie’s suicidal thoughts, and the handgun in his home, the therapist suggested he turn over the firearm to the Police Department. Jamie eventually agreed and muttered that although he had not thought about it, there were other ways he could take his life if he wanted to do so. The therapist called Jamie’s wife, and asked her to remove the gun from the premises before Jamie returned home. She took the gun directly to the police department.

The therapist then asked Jamie to focus once more on the past positives, including outdoor activities, surfing, diving, fishing, hunting, hiking, and farming. Jamie still enjoyed some of these activities, but was presently pessimistic, that with a wife on maternity leave, and a baby at the house that he helped care for, most of these activities were out of reach. The therapist suggested that he clear some time and plant his favorite vegetables. Jamie agreed to give it a try.

The therapist turned the conversation to Jamie asking him to consider all the alternatives in his life. Together they made a list: a loving partner, caring parents, and loyal friends, a roof over their head, and a baby he was getting to know and love. When Jamie found himself feeling depressed, he was to recount his many blessings and do some farm work on his land. The therapist also taught Jamie some self-soothing breathing techniques and simple guided meditations, which Jamie practiced between sessions, especially when he felt anxious and depressed.

Subsequent sessions.

Although Jamie’s suicidal thoughts had decreased, he continued to live with them on occasion. He frequently shared one of his main concerns about his future: that he would be unable to provide for his family if he lost his job on the police force. As a veteran, Jamie had taken advantage of the GI bill, but he had not considered other VA benefits. At the suggestion of the therapist, Jamie agreed that they would work together to apply to the VA for a disability claim for the service-connected PTSD, including their earlier sessions where they had reviewed his past negative experiences in the military. Getting additional details and formatting them for the VA would be fairly straightforward. The thought of receiving well-deserved compensation gave Jamie hope for a positive future.

As Jamie improved, his sessions were reduced to once a week. He had taken the therapist’s suggestions seriously and had cleared a portion of his land. The counseling session was conducted on Jamie’s property, and the therapist marveled at the large vegetable garden Jamie had planted. Jamie shared that he planned to clear another tract of land to plant fruit trees. Within four months of his first session, Jamie no longer suffered from suicidal thoughts. Within six months, he was cleared by both the psychiatrist and the psychologist to return to work. Simultaneously, he received a 100% service connected PTSD rating from the VA.

Jamie had also received a job offer from a former high school friend to work on a ranch a few 100 miles away. After discussions and the couple’s therapy sessions, Jamie and his wife decided they wanted to start over. The thought of working outdoors on a ranch excited Jamie, and while Melissa was reluctant to work, preferring to spend more time mothering their baby. They sold the house and purchased a modest house near their friend’s cattle ranch. At his last contact with the therapist, Jamie and Melissa were living “a brighter future” they had created together. Combining TFT with many of the other techniques mentioned in his book worked with Jamie.

Jamie’s story reminds us of a sobering statistic. While firearms are used in less than 6% of suicide attempts, over 50% of suicide deaths occur with firearms. In other words, guns are 8 times as lethal as other means and cause over half the suicide deaths. The most commonly used method of self-harm. Firearms are by far the most lethal, with a fatality rate of approximately 85%. Conversely, over 50% of people who attempt suicide using other methods will die, and the vast majority of all those who survive will not go on to die by suicide. This suggests that there is a real relationship between suicide attempts by firearms and an overall decline in the suicide rate.

While these statistics are alarming, they also highlight the importance of intervention and prevention. By promoting safe storage practices, increasing awareness, and ensuring access to mental health support, we can significantly reduce the risk of suicide and offer hope to those who are struggling. Jamie’s story, though tragic, inspires us to take action and reminds us that even small changes can save lives. Together, we can build a safer, more supportive community for everyone.

Some four decades later, Peter Wohlleben, a forester, published The Hidden Life of Trees, describing how trees “feel,” “communicate,” and work as “families,” providing for their offspring. Other examples include how trees share nutrients with neighbors in need and warn them when danger approaches (Wohlleben, 2019). The book was a best seller, received positive reviews, and won several awards.

In 2026, Michael Pollan published A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, which received positive reviews from writers from several different disciplines. Pollan launches his discussion by exploring the sentience of plants, noting how they remember stimuli, react to anesthesia, and pass information on to their kin. He challenges the “neurocentric” view of consciousness, which confines it solely to the brain, arguing instead that consciousness is distributed throughout the body. How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan’s earlier work on psychedelics, led him to become aware of what he describes as a “psychedelic lens,” which he has since used as a framework for exploring consciousness, including in his critique of the “biocentric” view.

This “psychedelic lens” has also proven especially valuable in evaluating how consciousness studies approaches AI’s contribution to the field. If consciousness were limited to information processing alone, AI might appear to offer a comprehensive model. However, consciousness also encompasses emotions, moods, and feelings—dimensions that AI has yet to incorporate. In my view, intelligence remains a useful term because extensive scholarship has addressed not only cognitive intelligence, but also emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, and what some have called the “wisdom of the body.”

Pollan emphasizes the importance of first-person accounts of varying conscious experiences and suggests his readers practice “consciousness hygiene” such as meditation, reflection, and solitude. And all of this started with his observation of plants!