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Altered States

The Dog-Eared Page

Honoring Aggression

In your society, and to some extent in others, the natural communication of aggression has broken down. You confuse violence with aggression and do not understand aggression’s creative activity or its purpose as a method of communication to prevent violence.

By Jane Roberts August 2013
Poetry

The Magic Of Macy’s

I am nineteen, standing behind the Coach / counter at Macy’s Herald Square. / This feels like my first real job: I take / a bus to the city; I wear a suit; / I ask strangers if I can help them, / even though I actually can’t help them, / since I know so little about leather goods.

By Benjamin S. Grossberg March 2013
Poetry

Loving A Woman

I was nineteen and on LSD / the only time God spoke to me. / Or, if not God, a voice so clear / and clearly not my own

By Ellen Bass November 2011
The Sun Interview

Vital Signs

Dr. Andrew Weil Diagnoses Western Medicine

The Western scientific paradigm is materialistic, meaning that scientists do not believe in anything that cannot be perceived or measured. Look how restrictive that belief is. It’s the reason for the limited acceptance of mind-body medicine. The nonphysical causation of physical events is not allowed for in the reigning scientific paradigm. If you talk about nonphysical causes of changes in physical systems, materialists either ignore you or make fun of you or, if you keep at it, get angry with you.

By David Kupfer January 2011
The Sun Interview

Between Two Worlds

Malidoma Somé On Rites Of Passage

There are certain experiences that, once you become privy to them, shatter so many things you have learned. When a shaman in my village takes me to a cave, opens a portal to another world, and walks there and back again, I have to ask myself, “What kind of technology is this?” When this same shaman lifts himself off the ground — that is to say, levitates — I have to wonder, “What kind of technology is that?” When another shaman is capable of walking on water, I have to wonder, “What is the technology that enables him to float?” And so on and so on. But modern science has grown so grandiose that it is unwilling to break out of its narrow thinking to explore alternatives that might better serve human consciousness and the world.

By Leslee Goodman July 2010
The Dog-Eared Page

excerpted from
The Doors Of Perception

According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But insofar as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.

By Aldous Huxley July 2010
Poetry

Enlightenment Is A Bitch

At first it isn’t so bad — a taste of ecstasy, / the world covered in honey. Even snails / scrawl the names of buddhas with their silvery trails.

By Dane Cervine March 2010
The Sun Interview

Across The Universe

Stanislav Grof On Nonordinary States Of Consciousness

It became clear to me that consciousness is not a product of the neurophysiological processes in the brain, as I had been taught at the university, but something much higher, possibly superordinate to matter. The idea that consciousness somehow mysteriously emerges from matter didn’t make sense to me anymore. It was easier to imagine that consciousness could create the experience of the material universe by an infinitely complex orchestration. I was suddenly in the realm of the Eastern philosophies, where consciousness is a primary attribute of existence and cannot be reduced to anything else.

By Angela Winter August 2009
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The Closest I’ve Come To God

I wake up at 8:50 A.M. and whip around the house frantically, not wanting to be late for my women’s Alcoholics Anonymous meeting: feed the cat, grab my knitting, splash water on my face, pour some half-perked coffee, and speed into town.

By Lois Judson August 2009
Quotations

Sunbeams

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.

G.K. Chesterton

July 2009