The Psychedelic Future of the Mind: How Entheogens Are Enhancing Cognition, Boosting Intelligence, and Raising Values

This book is an assortment, a compilation of pieces, including a couple chapters by other authors. This too-short book somewhat achieves its goal; it's appropriate for an entheogen library but uncritically perpetuates poisonous fatally self-defeating fallacies. The book really needs to be better, more consistently enlightened, with a thoroughgoing critique. This book is average, conventional groupthink in too many ways, and where it breaks away, it does so insufficiently. Regarding the cognitive potentials of entheogens, it's a start, but could be more substantial (without being longer). It's a useful brief survey of the field, of current attitudes; that's a relatively strong point of the book.The sections on entheogen history and on psychedelics in cognitive science need to be expanded, but without the tepid compromise that limits this book. It needs to be harder-hitting; it's not good enough to accomplish its goals. It relies too much on Stan Grof's quirky, narrow model, his fixation on the birth-trauma metaphor.It needs to go deeper on the taboo, censored huge interest and role of entheogens throughout many fields. As suggested but not emphasized enough in this book, millions of people (researchers, professors, priests, and mystics) are highly interested though censored and silent, and we get glimpses of this interest in several points in the book. Roberts doesn't step up to the plate and in a sustained and direct way tackle this key blocking impediment, of communication censorship; he only keeps noting it, too feebly. I would expect his survey of thousands of books to point out what's really going on, to explain why I go into the New Age bookstore and am told they have no books about psychoactive drugs in religion, when in fact, as Roberts knows, those books and sections are strewn throughout the store, separated, scattered, diluted.Roberts vaguely mentions that there is much entheogen activity at websites, but his book is too retrograde to cover them seriously. The limited and self-defeating thinking (or lack of thoroughgoing consistent critical thinking) seen in these books that cite each other, shows why the future of clear thinking is driven online, where there is less hidebound and conventional thinking than in old fashioned and old conventional-thinking printed books.I disagree with Roberts' assertion in this book that entheogens should be controlled and doled-out by authorities. The law should be the same as it always was from the beginning of time until a few years ago in 1966 and Nixon's drug schedules, which is to say, no law, other than accurate labelling and quality control, since religious freedom means freedom of traditional mystic methods which were entheogenic, as the books Roberts cites show. He should know better, for this book and from his Entheogen Chrestomathy (a collection of passages about entheogens from many books).Instead, we get more crypto-Prohibition, Roberts allowing himself to be coerced by mental censorship into contradicting his own position, effort, and evidence, and training his readers to similarly sustain their uncritical key assumptions about religion, and training them how to hold self-contradictory ideas in their mind like himself, Walsh, and most of the other authors. Clark Heinrich is relatively enlightened in his book,  Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy , elegantly tracing Amanita throughout our Western religious history. For coherent clear thinking about rights and meaningful religious freedom, see Steve Kubby  The Politics of Consciousness: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom .The books Roberts cites and surveys show that Greeks and Christians used mixed wine freely, and we claim to legally have religious freedom, so against this incoherent book, we must insist we be as free in our religious banqueting parties as we were during Antiquity; we cannot settle for any lesser pseudo-freedom while claiming we have religious freedom and claiming that America is religious. Follow the Supreme Court consistently: leave the entheogen churches alone; reject Roberts' compromising authoritarian administration of entheogens.This book claims to be forward-looking rather than a historical recounting, and yet it perpetuates major fallacious assumptions about history, in a self-defeating way, by implicitly asserting a history while lacking sufficient critical examination of our Western history of entheogens. Being forward looking shouldn't be at the expense of telling a false and self-defeating story of the past. It would be better to be silent about the past than to tell a false story of our past lacking entheogens, so you could say this book is not exclusively forward looking enough. It's a fairly good forward-looking story combined with a bad careless habitual historical story that defeats the forward effort.Roberts needs to read the books excerpts he's gathered and put together the pieces more, on an independent basis. Like all prominent authors of entheogen books, his thinking is far too compromised and unoriginal, coerced into unconsciously shooting himself in the foot and affirming the underpinning doctrines that support the Prohibition-friendly reality-tunnel. Schultes does the same, and Roger Walsh's article that's a chapter of this book does the same. They ask the Prohibition-saturated question "Do drugs have religious import?" These drug policy reform leaders are preventing success by declaring defeat before they've begun, by framing the self-evidently obvious as if it were something that's in doubt. Walsh titles his article self-defeatingly as a question, "are entheogens false?"This book -- its authors -- reify habitually the uncritically adopted unspoken Prohibitionist-compliant dogma, a hazy, incoherent dogma, that scholars understand how Christian mystics throughout history accessed the intense mystic altered state, and we know that they accessed it through meditation, and we know they didn't access it through drugs. It is unthinkable and unwriteable by Walsh and Roberts -- mis-leaders of reform -- to consider the question I pose: to what extent were visionary plants used by Christians throughout history? Roberts contradicts the evidence he has collected: he cites the book The Psychology of Religion by Hood et al  The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach , which states that Dan Merkur has shown in his book  The Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience  that Jewish mystics used visionary plants.Yet these writers continue, as firmly repeated in the present book, to put forward without any critical examination, the assertion -- taken as if granted and established -- that traditional Christian mysticism is distinct from the use of visionary plants. Per my Maximal Entheogen Theory of Religion, Ruck et al, cited by Roberts' book, have demonstrated enough evidence that we must assume the opposite: every Christian mystic used visionary plants, unless proven otherwise. That's the exact opposite of the strong tendency of all these authors. They contradict themselves. Roberts advises about the Entheogenic Reformation, and yet, he in unthinking convention, together with the other authors, robs visionary plants of their credit.He gives Christianity and Christian religious experiencing, he gives credit to non-visionary plant vague ill-defined practices, contemplation practices that are assumed without any critical thinking, to be non-plant based -- despite copious evidence that Merkur and Ruck and the entheogen historians have gathered, including mushrooms in art that I have routinely identified. Roberts cites books that contain that evidence, and yet he unthinkingly fails to connect, instead, he omits and shuts out visionary plants, robbing them of their due central credit throughout our religious history.He contradicts himself; he compromises with the mental shackles of Prohibition unspoken dogma (the silent Reform-preventing dogma of repeating the poisonous nonsensical phrase "entheogens vs. natural traditional mystic methods"), even while citing books that contradict that phrase and show it is a false dichotomy, a massive category error. Evidence citied in many of the hundreds of books Roberts surveys, indicate -- when you engage your critical thinking, consistently -- that the category "entheogens" is identically the same as the category "traditional mystic practice".This book purports to advocate entheogens, yet the author permits himself to be psyched-out by Prohibitionist mental shackles and the very kind of endemic, biased thought-censorship that he mildly comments on in this book. Roberts ends up advocating against entheogens in our religious history, despite the evidence (which Roberts gathers in his books and citations, pages 146-151 here, and his book An Entheogen Chrestomathy) that shows that Christian mysticism is the same thing as entheogens; that entheogens are the traditional method of accessing the intense mystic altered state. He cites Clark Heinrich, and Carl Ruck et al:  The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist .Uncritically parroting repeatedly the nonsense phrase "entheogens vs. natural methods" (going directly against Jonathan Ott's title  Pharmacophilia: or The Natural Paradises ), Roberts robs and steals from visionary plants the central credit they are due, within our own Western history. Just like almost all the other prominent, Prohibition-friendly, collaborationist, compromisers (Schultes, cited on page 148:  Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers ). Roberts and all authors need to weed out their self-contradicting compromises from their thinking, purify their thinking of Prohibition-friendly unstated, uncritical dogma, and start telling the true, coherent, evidence-based history, abandoning care of what the mental shackles of censorship and Prohibition dictate.Walsh (chapter 5 of this book) needs to move forward and stop asking whether drugs have genuine religious import, and engage substance: how does religious experiencing come through visionary plants, as seen throughout religious history? This isn't a matter of citing more evidence, so much as a matter of stating coherent connections, and being consistent in their thinking and handling of the evidence Roberts has gathered. The key false dichotomy of "drugs vs. traditional mystic methods" is totally entrenched in Walsh's writing, and totally void of any thought of critical examination, despite the seemingly open-minded questioning implied in this chapter title (false advertising): "Psychedelics and Religious Experiences -- What is the Relationship?"Walsh's chapter is based on a massive fallacious assumption never mentioned or examined for even a moment: that mystics didn't use entheogens -- despite the books cited by this book. Walsh's name is given with M.D., Ph.D., and D.H.L., but he utterly fails to think about his underlying assumption, in this article supposedly about inquiring into this relationship. As Roberts writes about censorship and omission of psychedelics in Cognitive Science: "Whether this omission is due to a simple lack of information or scientists' and scholars fear for their careers by touching a taboo topic is hard to say; it is probably some of both."Roberts and Walsh colossally fail to effectively counter and call for an end to this mental straightjacket and censorship. But at least Roberts mentions it; a glimmering of consciousness of the conditions of Prohibition begins to awaken, but we need a thousand times more, and this gentle, compliant, positive-thinking book is too mild to tackle these key blocking dynamics, resulting from Prohibition for Profit.What use is Roberts' advice on Reform when he despite his evidence persists in reifying a key Prohibitionist lie, that historical religion uses (vague, undefined) "traditional methods" that are not visionary plants? Roberts repeats that dogmatic assumption, and never stops to subjective it to critical examination. His section on entheogen history is not connected and integrated into his thinking through the rest of the book. Ralph Metzner (who is mentioned on page 70) wrote that he made a strategic mistake in the 1960s by portraying psychedelics as something new. Roberts hasn't learned that lesson, despite decades of scholarship gathered in his Chrestomathy, such as Robert Graves' discovery of mushrooms in Greek religion and myth in 1957.That fatal mistake and persisting in robbing entheogens of their fully due credit as the source of the mystic state throughout history, continues to reign supreme even as Ruck et al pile up more and more evidence; Roberts continues omitting and shutting out entheogens from our religious history even while he dabbles incoherently in showing that the reality is the opposite. This book is futile because in the name of Reform, it falsely eliminates entheogens from our history, despite evidence the book cites. This book inadvertantly keeps telling the story of self-defeat, as the master narrative. The key to Reform involves quitting telling that 1960s Prohibition-supporting story; Roberts doesn't have a compelling enough story without integrated that evidence throughout his thinking.This book's purpose is Reform, yet this book perpetuates a key fallacy that pushes entheogens away: Roberts tells the story, reifying and repeating it, that our religion's history is not entheogenic. He falls short of providing complete coherent independent critical thinking. His error is deeply entrenched in this book: page 55, he mis-portrays antiquity as having merely rites and activities, as opposed to later word-based religion of 1500, and now, new, "primary religious experiencing". This is the evolutionism fallacy: that we have entheogens now, and we are more evolved than antiquity, therefore, antiquity lacked entheogens, but had merely "rites" (presumed uncritically and inconsistently in this book as being non-entheogenic).He ought to tell the more compelling true story, of returning to the non-placebo original Eucharist which inspired Christianity throughout its history, as the evidence and coherent thinking indicates. Roberts isn't interested in looking at the copious evidence for entheogen Christianity because it contradicts his preconceived self-defeating and incoherent story of religious evolution -- a false story that is encouraged by Prohibition's censorship effect. Roberts several times in this book criticizes authors for omitting and hiding their pro-entheogen views; for example, page 122 points out that authors censor William James, like I have criticized Ken Wilber for starting with first book by omitting William James' lead-in, "On nitrous oxide, ..." (before "it occurred to me that perception is a veil; multiple states...").But Roberts needs to gain self-awareness of how he is censoring and shackling his own thinking, and thus perpetuating the mental shackles of his readers, helping to keep Prohibition in place and prevent us from perceiving the central role of entheogens in our history. He should take a lesson from his coverage of the censorship D.C.A. Hillman's dissertation was subjected to ( The Chemical Muse: Drug Use and the Roots of Western Civilization ) and ask: How is this present book also compromised and coerced into being self-censored?Roberts should've gathered together the several points in his book, instances of censorship he points out, calling for breaking through these mental chains and start putting the pieces of evidence, the connections, together, coherently, to tell a story that makes compelling sense. I'm surprised that Roberts didn't mention along with Hillman, Michael Rinella's book  Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens , which was also extremely censored. Censorship is the top topic, the main restriction now, for policy reform, which is why online has taken the lead away from the hidebound, conformist press: Prohibition Press, I have named it, after I spoke with the entheogen-friendly Park Street Press about this problem at a Western Esotericism conference.Roberts mentions that people around 1970 were drawn to religion by LSD, and yet, he tells the Prohibition-friendly version of the story, a false tale artificially created by a censorship filtering effect, and fails to mention that people were forced to move away from entheogens and attempt to substitute meditation and a placebo make-believe Eucharist instead, and forced to tell the entheogen-diminishing story of how religion with its entheogen removed is better -- a story now entrenched as dogma, mitigating against Roberts' Entheogenic Reformation project. (Jonathan Ott advocated that term in his book  The age of entheogens & the angel's dictionary .)Roberts calls for $1 billion for research including "education" toward Prohibition reform, but should more emphasize abandoning the phony drug schedules and fully re-legalizing entheogens like before October 1966. Just get rid of obstructionist Prohibition. We don't have a budget problem, we have a Prohibition problem. We don't need a billion dollars so much as we need bona fide actual religious freedom, which means nothing if not the freedom to access ecstatic fear and trembling and awesome power that has always been the source of religion, through the traditional mystic method: the sacred meal of the Lord's flesh, which is real food and which transmits effective grace just as has always been claimed for this the traditional method of mystic experiencing.-- Michael Hoffman

If you are a psyquedelic user this book is a MUST read!Psyquedelics are out there in our universities parties and sometimes even classrooms, but just when we are high on them, not as they should be: as class subjects. Dr. Robert is the fist one who has a class on psyquedelics and this book is the best way to learn from him if you are not one of his lucky students. He gave voice and structured my thoughts, giving me more precise and accurate facts to explain them to others.

The ideas and premises proposed by TBR are exactly what humanity needs during these challenging and tumultuous times. This is a great read for anyone wishing to consider how our ethics, morals, and values can be heavily influenced and even completely altered from the profound experiences offered by psychedelics.

I like it so much to know to stay away as far....It book you need for the knowledge there of..education is best and safe route and I have read lot of books and see on TV and still don't make sense..

Very informative book.  The Psychedelic Future of the Mind: How Entheogens Are Enhancing Cognition, Boosting Intelligence, and Raising Values

Excellent overview of the current state of psychedelic research. Considers many of the ongoing issues concerning psychedelic experience as well topics from Transpersonal Psychology.

Mind = Blown!

The Psychedelic Future of the Mind needs to be read by every psychology and education professional working to advance human thought processes over the next several decades. This book is a general mapping of the implications and meaning behind altered states of consciousness. We lost so much ground over the past few decades in research into the value of psychedelics. Most books on psychedelics and entheogens that have come out in the past few years have focused on the scientific research into mental health and consciousness expansion.Roberts takes a completely different tack, orienting the reader with a discussion of the power of mystical experience ("the experience that alters all others"). He then moves into a more interesting and powerful discussion of the MultiState implications of psychedelics, and completes his book by presenting a cartography for how psychologists and psychiatrists might begin to think about business models to address the issue of evolving higher consciousness as professionals. Roberts presents many questions people aren't yet asking.The thinking here joins science and mental health with more humanistic thought. If the psychedelic renaissance is real (and it is), Roberts' book is a must-read for everyone from college students to lifelong explorers of human potential.

Great book that touches on some interesting points others dont.

This book is highly speculative, too focused on religion, and cites hardly half a dozen scientific articles. Could have been more rigorous.