Out of body experiences are a human universal. Why? Because human brains are constructed in a way that enables such perceptions. Dreaming, drug use, and near death experiences regularly give rise to such experiences. Recreational users of ketamine are quite familiar with the experience, and none of these people are operating under the illusion that [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·association·Avatar·cognitive architecture·dissociation·dreaming·drug use·ketamine·near death experiences·out of body experiences·reincarnation·Richard Alleyne·soul·soul flights·spirit·Tron·virtual reality
Here is the fantastic news: one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, Werner Herzog, was granted rare access to Chauvet Cave and filmed the interior in 3-D. Chauvet Cave is of course famous for its 30,000 year old art — it is a spectacular display of human creativity and is probably the result of [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·ASC·behavioral modernity·cave art·Cave of Forgotten Dreams·Chatelperronian·Chauvet Cave·culture·Gravettian·John Hawks·Mousterian·Neanderthals·shamanic activities·shamans·soul·soul beliefs·theriomorphs·Werner Herzog
In many books and articles addressing the origins of “religious” behavior, one will find the assertion that deliberate burials are indicative of soul beliefs and that because people began burying the dead approximately 100,000 years ago, this marks the beginning of what we today call religion. As I noted in this post, there are several [...]
Tags:afterlife·afterlife beliefs·burials·commonsense dualism·deliberate burials·fox·foxes·funerary·grave goods·guardian spirit·Jordan·Levant·Lisa Maher·mortuary·Native Americans·Natufian·pre-Natufian·Russia·social complexity·social organization·soul·spirit·Sunghir·Sungir·Upper Paleolithic·Uyun al-Hammam·vision·vision quest
Humans have been engaging with the supernatural for at least 50,000 years and perhaps much longer. Because humans have been writing for less than 5,000 years, this means that some 45,000 years of religious history reveals itself to us only through the archaeological record. For a long period of time, archaeologists were reluctant to investigate [...]
Tags:archaeology·burials·domestic·grave goods·Higgs·Jarman·monuments·neolithic·Richard Bradley·ritual·ritualization·sacred·shrines·soul·soul beliefs·writing
Over at Seed, the clinical physician David Weisman weighs in on the centuries old debate regarding the existence of souls and suggests that the widely held notion of a soul is inextricably linked to an erroneous sense of unified mind. This debate was famously framed by Descartes, who proclaimed — as a first principle and [...]
Tags:A Mind So Rare·aphasia·Beyond Good and Evil·Cartesian dualism·cogito·commonsense dualism·consciousness·David Weisman·Descartes·Divided Minds Specious Souls·evolutionary psychology·How the Mind Works·ischemia·Merlin Donald·mind·modular·modularity·Nietzsche·soul·soulists·souls·spirit·Stephen Pinker·subconscious·subjectivity·unified mind
Archaeologists working in Europe have it good, really good. Depending on one’s interests, you can research just about anything. Paleoanthropologists can work on hominid evolution (i.e., Homo heidelbergensis, H. antecessor, H. neanderthalensis), while their colleagues can study a host of fascinating subjects, including the Upper Paleolithic transition, mesolithic hunter-gatherers, incipient agriculturalists, and the usual smattering [...]
Tags:afterlife·axes·barrows·celts·complex hunter-gatherers·cosmology·European archaeology·flints·folk beliefs·grave goods·hominid evolution·Homo antecessor·Homo heidelbergensis·Homo neanderthalensis·Iron Age·Kate Ravilious·Kwakiutl·magic·megaliths·mesolithic·mortuary practices·mythology·myths·Neanderthals·oldest house in Britain·pagans·ritual objects·ritualism·Romans·Sean Coughlan·sedentism·shamanist·shamans·soul·spirit·Stone Age·superstition·talismans·thunderstones·Upper Paleolithic·Vikings
There are many who believe that near death experiences (“NDE”) provide evidence of the existence of a spirit-soul and that those who have these close encounters with death have glimpsed another realm. Over at Brain Blogger, Jennifer Gibson discusses some recent studies of NDEs in a post titled “Light at the End of the Tunnel [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·American Indians·Asian Indians·Brain Blogger·Buddhist·carbon dioxide·Christian·consciousness·cultural imprinting·cultural patterning·Glenn Roberts·hallucinations·heaven·Hindu·Jennifer Gibson·Jesus·John Owen·Krishna·metaphysical realm·metaphysics·Muslim·NDE·near death experience·pan-human neurology·Siddhartha·soul·spirit·supernatural·The Near Death Experience·Vishnu·Wakan Tanka·Yamdoots·Yamraj
Whether or not you like Christopher Hitchens, one thing is certain: he can turn an incisive phrase. At his best, Hitchens writes with an acerbic aplomb that can be charming; at his worst, he is downright nasty.
With the latter Hitchens in mind, I have not yet been able to bring myself to read his jeremiad, [...]
Tags:atheism·caliphate·Christopher Hitchens·consumerism·crystals·fundamentalists·Galileo·God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything·Islamic empire·jihad·Khalil Gibran·Laurens van der Post·materialism·Muslim·mysticism·mystics·New Age·Prince Charles·radical Islam·religion·science·sharia·soul·universal soul
In light of yesterday’s post regarding the widespread and naturally explicable belief that humans have spirits or souls, I thought it would be appropriate to continue on a related topic. It is often claimed, by enthusiastic archaeologists and anthropologists, that deliberate burial of the dead is a symbolic practice related to belief in the spirit [...]
Tags:burials·burying the dead·cult of the dead·deliberate burials·grave goods·hominids·Homo neanderthalensis·Homo sapiens·hygienic burial·Kebara·modern behavior·mortuary practices·Paleolithic religion·parsimony·Qafzeh·ritualized burial·Robert Gargett·Sally Binford·Shanidar·soul·spirit·symbolic thinking·taphonomy
In yesterday’s post, I asked “What is Spirituality?“ Naturally, today’s post asks “What is the Spirit?” It is a related and timely question, especially given Eric Simpson’s recent post over at HuffPo Religion, “The Tyranny of the Body in the Quest for Spiritual Life.” In keeping with the Western metaphysical tradition, Simpson simply assumes there [...]
Tags:Aquinas·Augustine·Cartesian dualism·chimera·Christianity·commonsense dualism·dualism·Eric Simpson·folk psychology of souls·Immanuel Kant·Jesse Bering·metaphysics·mind-body·Paul Bloom·Plato·pre-Socratic·Rene Descartes·soul·spirit·Western metaphysical tradition
