How to Change Your Mind

came to my aunt Ruthellen and watched, horrified, as her face slowly transformed into Judith’s. Ruthellen ...

friction of the horsehair rubbing over me, and then the breeze of sound flowing past as it crossed the lips ...

of what happened by telling the story of my trip and hearing her thoughts about it. What you’ve just rea ...

experience of another way to react—or not react. That can be cultivated.” Meditation, she suggested, was one way to ...

psychedelic guide, inviting me to meet her friend Rocío, a thirty-five- year-old Mexican therapist whom she ...

In its natural state, the venom is toxic—a defense chemical sprayed by the toad when it feels threatened. But w ...

management consultant with a couple of kids; I had vaguely known she was into Eastern religion but had no ...

As the sun came up, I decided I would decide when I got there. Rocío, whom I’d made aware of my trepi ...

Could this be it?” That was the thought, though there was no longer a thinker to have it. Here words ...

begin to reconstitute themselves: the dimensions of time and space returned first, blessing my still-scattere ...

the very fact of being, that there is anything whatsoever. Rather than being necessarily the case, this ...

wasn’t the very act of resolving to favor being a form of doing? A betrayal of the whole idea? A tru ...

the work of William James, W. T. Stace, and Walter Pahnke.) “Looking back on the entirety of your session ...

toad experience, for which it wasn’t designed, after all. Because when I used the same survey to evalua ...

minds—over literally thousands of years—to find the words for this extraordinary human experience and make ...

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the ...

matter? It turns out the very same molecules flow through the natural world and the human brain, linking us ...

work at hand, whether that means regulating our access to memories and strong emotions from within or ...

CHAPTER FIVE THE NEUROSCIENCE Your Brain on Psychedelics WHAT JUST HAPPENED in my brain? A molecule had laun ...

location, serotonin is liable to make very different things happen— sometimes exciting a neuron to fire ...