Spiritual Narcissism, Ego Inflation, Evolutionary Spirituality (Jules Evans)

Michael Hoffman, April 13, 2025

Contents:

Disclaimer

Disclaimer about political characterizations: I am not sure I’ll keep this content, it includes political narratives and characterizations.

I might condense the transcript. Not sure it’s viable content for this site.

I have not read the transcript, I have only listened to the video 1 time.

I do not want to propagate political attitudes and assumptions and narratives.

This video has useful warnings, but I reject all political narratives, values, views, assumptions, characterizations.

I identify as autistic, I mean, not politically attuned or identified.

Intro

Ironic joke about the picture at top:

Join the superior, evolved RACE [Valentinus’ gnostic idea of the 3 “races”] of the elect Egodeath community lording it over the lesser people tormented in flames, down below.

[That’s a famous joke, about the saved peering over the edge of Heaven to look down at the torments of those below, for entertainment.]

The Elect transcending the little people, shown as mere stars below them.

Evans’ Vague Misrepresentation of Ken Wilber’s Theorizing about Spiritual Narcissism

Jules Evans is an example of spiritual narcissism. oops, I meant to say, he warns against that.

That move is how Evans abuses Ken Wilber and apparently rips off Ken Wilber, twisting Ken Wilber’s warning about spir. nar., into an apparent accusation that Ken Wilber is the peak of spir. nar.

A harmful parasitical move on Evans’ part, if I saw what I think I saw.

The way the pyramid diagram is introduced & shown in the video, with Evans talking over it, equates Ken Wilber = the peak of spir. nar. — when in fact Ken Wilber articulated theory about what spir. nar. is.

The result seems to be a malicious ripoff of Ken Wilber, based on my initial viewing of the video.

An inexcusable omission & ambiguity on Evans’ part. Evans fails to say the Ken Wilber warned, in an elaborate, theorized way, about spir. nar.

Evans is repeating and agreeing with what Ken Wilber wrote back in 1990s, that Evans is now parrotting here, in 2023, 30 years AFTER Ken Wilber’s books on the topic.

The Egodeath community has recog’d & praised Egodeath theory for being seemingly the ONLY psychedelics explanation that does NOT promise to be the savior of humanity.

The benefits of Egodeath theory are great, but not “save the world” or “evolve man” – I don’t know what “evolve” means.

The “evolve” concept & value system & marketing promises, is external to Egodeath theory. I model mental model maturation resulting from, caused by, Psilocybin — I am even a radical by saying, Psilocybin causes mental model transformation.

Not baloney pop-speak lexicon, mystical experiences occassioned by psychedelics or “epxerimented with” or “ego dissolution” or “neuroplasticity” – throw that lexicon in the trash, I reject it. the mystical absolute?

That’s not my lexicon. My system (Egodeath theory of psychedelic eternalism) is closed and coherent, in this sense.

“Common-core mysticism and perennialism?” Alien to my thinking.

I ONLY agree that mysticism is a fumbling indicator that there is treasure, Transcendent Knowledge, buried under that noise and junk overgrowth.

AFTER YOU REMOVE THE “MYSTICISM” OVERLAY, THEN you get what it obscures, Transcendent Knowledge.

Alan Houot I and can find common ground here. I reject his obsession with alien entities encounted – REJECT. That’s not Egodeath theory. That’s an alien lexicon and set of concerns.

The concerns of Egodeath theory are hardly the concerns of “common-core mysticism and perennialism” as everyone else conceives of the latter.

I only agree with common-core mysticism and perennialism insofar as it is framed per Egodeath theory.

The Egodeath theory is a “closed system” that SUBSUMES AND TRANSFORMS:

  • entheogen scholarship
  • Psychedelic RenaissanceTM
  • Common-core mysticism and perennialism
  • evolutionary spirituality(?)
  • Tim Freke’s recent emergent evolutionary spir’y: he hasn’t figured out his new view yet; make it up as you go. Wait for his “podbook” to come out. It’s cautioning against pop spir’y ideas & values like “destroy the ego”, & “nondual unity oneness” – a concept/model that I reject too because “Not wrong, but not helpful; not relevant; not useful (nor simple nor clear)” <<– my Engineering product mantra.

Jan Irvin recognizes that I don’t participate in the Huxley Social Engr’g project.

Jan Irvin interviewed every leader in psychedelics, and demonized the lot of them, but not me because I am not one of them.

Egodeath theory will NOT save the world! It will increase our humility and our comprehension.

And give easy fast enlightenment (being up front about pros/cons; good news & bad news) – against the hucksters.

I never saw value in the psychedelic utopianism, evangelism, evolutionary spirituality, elitism doctrine/ narrative.

I was too busy struggling to write up my own theory of how mental model transformation works.

That point is made in the video, that “challenging experiences”/ bad trips, and personal brokenness by eg Huxleys, is a historical motivation that drove their overblown, destructive utopianism.

todo: maybe move my commentary sections from within the transcript, to up here

Motivations of this Page

Interesting warnings by Evans, same as Jan Irvin discovered to his horror, than Huxley pushes.

Jules makes good points to beware of, not covered by me previously, because I’m so not attuned to such utopianism. Related: Egodeath theory is distinctive for NOT pushing:

  • “The Egodeath theory’s enlightenment will save the world.
  • “If only everyone knew Egodeath theory, that would save the world.
  • “We MUST adopt Egodeath theory, or else, the end of the world.
  • “It is URGENT that everyone MUST have Psilocybin transformation from possibilism-thinking to eternalism-thinking, per the Egodeath theoryTM, or else, man/ planet/ world won’t survive.”

The elect, the higher, the superior spiritual people – I want to make sure to avoid this, but that’s not a risk, since I’ve not asserted “learn the Egodeath theory to be a dominant superior person above the scummy masses & to save man.”

I *love* everyday Christians and the whole populace.

I’m eager to make Egodeath theory available to everyone, so they can have understanding of religious myth & can enter Psilocybin with reasonable control stability. Not to save man/ planet/ world.

Not Egodeath Eschatology.

Mainly I envision an audience of Loose Cognitive Scientists, but also, an audience of everyone.

I love popular religion and I merely want to offer people a superior explanatory model, per Science and especially per Engineering.

I read Mondo 2000 and have R U Sirius blessing written on my article draft the Cybernetic Theory of Ego Transcendence, before Mondo 2000 mag even existed! My friends in 1988 had Leary books, and Reality Hacker zine, and the other pre-Mondo zine. High Frontiers.

As a psychedelics-studying engineer, in 1988-2000, I read:

  1. High Frontiers
  2. Reality Hacker
  3. Mondo 1999 (as I called it, to diminish it & express skepticism and lack of alignment with my own views & values)
  4. WIRED

and all issues of Gnosis mag, in late 1990s.

I read the Mondo extropian zine, but my project is not that project AND I CHALLENGED AND CRITICIZED R U SIRIUS IN PERSON (for ignoring blotter) in a classroom at Stanford.

I never really bought into “extropianism”, I was struggling then in 1992 to write my 1997 theory spec summary of my 1988 breakthrough theory of what ego transcendence is REALLY all about, and why my model is superior to Ken Wilber because eternalism 100% evaporates ego, in a sense, humbling it to death entirely due to block-universe eternalism: you are a {snake frozen in rock}, hard to have egoic inflation, in a sense.

My expectations in 1985-1987 were modest: I simply, merely expected non-dysfunctional cross-time control – that’s all.

Houot reminds me of the inflated promises and narrative, in advocating a science discoverer explorer rational psychonaut approach. He one time writes about fitness requirements.

But Houot does not advocate any form of spirituality; he is vigorously, scorched-earth, anti-spirituality (too much) – making Houot immune to this.

In idea development page 27, I wrote why I am alienated from spiritual narcissism and operate from an alienated, wholly different basis than what Evans warns about.

Eternalism-based mystic revelation is the humbling opposite — spir. nar. is a symptom of possibilism-premised, ego-based notions of what kind of power Transcendent Knowledge power would give you.

{hubristic, psychedelics-empowered giants struck down by the gods}

In idea development page 27, check my April 13 2025 comments (a few minutes ago) about Tim Freke and how his approach is not this sort of inflation, he is anti- “ego reduction”.

Pop spir is too humble!

Pop spir’y destroys – not properly “transcends & includes” per Ken Wilber — the individual ego, pop spir destroys the individual, and Tim Freke wants to save the individual person and ego and separateness.

Tim Freke lately is against excessive “nondual unitity oneness”.

I insult oneness as “beginner’s initial experience” – I paint relational Transcendent Knowledge; 2-level, dependent control is the case.

I disagree with 99% of perennial philosophy: I ONLY agree that there is a common core or buried treasure; I disagree with everything people write about what that treasure is.

Actual enlightenment is entirely different than the freewill modern era assumes: enlightenment is per Ramesh, no-free-will – but, my model is healthier per Tim Freke & Ken Wilber.

Freke grew up w/ Ramesh as influence, now Freke rejects that scorched-earth unbalanced and simplieistic approach, like Egodeath theory is way better than Ramesh B.

Integrate possibilism-thinking & eternalism-thinking, to be whole and mature – and repair a little bit, dysfunctional cross-time control; at least, Jan 1988, I no longer held the same, egoic expectations of my cross-time control – enlightenment was a relief, by discovering block-universe eternalism and its limitations, its limiting ramifications.

Video: Jules Evans – Evolutionary spirituality as a frame for psychedelic experiences (2023)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGzEWLZHTQ –

Video title:
Jules Evans – Evolutionary spirituality as a frame for psychedelic experiences
ch: Exeter Psychedelics Group
Nov. 1, 2023
Talk and Q+A with Exeter Research Psychedelic Colloquium.

Desc. of video:

“One of the dominant cultural frames for psychedelics in western culture over last 130 years has been evolutionary spirituality.

“This tradition suggests human evolution is not finished and can be guided towards the creation of higher beings through such techniques as psychedelics and eugenics or genetic modification.

“But is everyone evolving into a new species, or just an elite? Jules will discuss the tradition of evolutionary spirituality, raise the ethical implications of this tradition – its tendency to spiritual narcissism, contempt for the less-evolved masses, Social Darwinism and Malthusianism, spiritual eugenics, and illiberal utopian politics—and suggest responses to these limitations.”

Transcript

Jules Evans:

uh hi everyone thank you for having me um so I am going to be doing a talk um about uh based on a paper that I published for a um special Frontiers edition of uh dedicated to psychedelic Humanities that uh a few of us wrote I think Peter also uh wrote well I know Peter wrote a paper for it as well and um my paper was called more of old than you and uh

it’s about evolutionary spirituality uh as a frame for psychedelic experience this is uh came out of a project that I worked on uh during the uh pandemic I was working on a book about um aldus Huxley and his friends and family and I was was just um curious to discover um Alice’s support for um for eugenics uh both from you know from from the 20s all the way to the end of his career

and this got me looking at uh evolutionary spirituality and its tendency towards what I call kind of spiritual Eugenics so I did some research on that and and I’ve been working on a on a book on it but um you know most of My Time is Now taken up with this challenging psychedelic experiences project but

I’m going to talk to you a little bit about my research and at the end I I’ll come back to how this kind of connects to um the work that arini and I and others are doing on uh challenging psychedelic experiences um okay so the key points that I’m going to cover uh over the next hour um are I I think it’s I I

I hope to persuade you maybe you already think this that it’s use ful and interesting to learn about evolutionary spirituality and its role in the history of new age culture and psychedelic culture uh and I think it’s been um understudied so far um and it’s still very much present in psychedelic uh culture this this Frame of evolutionary spirituality um Rick doblin of maps for example says that he hopes psychedelics will lead to a core of evolved Humanity um ran Griffiths also argued that

psychedelics can help in the evolution of humanity Christian angam the leading investor in psychedelics has argued that uh humans will eventually split into two different species an immortal Cosmic superbeings and the uninvolved uh who choose to stay behind on Earth um so we’re going to look at some of the history and tenets of evolutionary spirituality uh and I’m going to point out four flaws that I think um proponents of evolutionary spirituality um often fall into uh spiritual narcissism contempt for the uninvolved unevolved masses

uh social Darwinism and malthusianism and a tendency to illiberal and authoritarian spiritual Eugenics I don’t say that everyone who believes in evolutionary spirituality falls into these uh moral traps uh and I’ll at the end I’ll talk about you know some well-known figures who don’t um I’m going to move quite quickly this is quite kind of um you know they’re covering a lot of uh history of ideas here um if you want to look from you know some of the supporting evidence it’s in my Frontiers paper and in a lot of articles that I’ve published online on these topics um so firstly

what what what how do we Define evolutionary spirituality um it’s a subset of the broader New Age movement not everyone in New Age culture uh believes in evolutionary spirituality but some do um it it’s based on the idea that human evolution is not finished uh and can be guided towards um the creation of higher beings through such techniques as meditation psychedelics and genetic modification um it’s a kind of religion a worship of human potential and our potential to evolve into Super beings or at least the potential of some humans to evolve into Super beings um

so I’m going to paint a brief prehistory of evolutionary spirituality um you could you know you can trace it as far back as you like but you could say that uh one of its Origins is in Renaissance neoplatonic magic and the idea that uh special uh Advanced uh Superior beings have the potential to evolve into Gods um there also you could see his historical roots in 18th century moral progressivism in the in the theories of people like Scottish enlightenment philosophers like Adam SMI Adam Smith or Adam Ferguson uh or David Hume this idea that Human Society evolves through certain stages uh from peasant to agricultural uh to uh to capitalist and this is a natural evolution of into morally Superior societies uh likewise the end of the Century you have uh utopian thinkers like Godwin and the Marquee de Condes arguing that eventually science will progress so far that

humans will become these Blissful Immortal uh beings um I think molus is also a key figure in the history of evolutionary spirituality um molus was suspicious of the utopianism of Godwin of course but he also argued that uh in his words the the world is a mighty process for the creation and formation of mind so that there’s this kind of Natural Evolution that’s Guided by um the Supreme mind in which more conscious and more moral forms uh replicate while less conscious and less moral forms die off so there’s a kind of uh a progress natural progress toward towards higher and more conscious and more moral forms in malus’s Universe um likewise in in some German romantic and idealist thinkers of the 19th century uh or the late 18th

early 19th century you have this idea of God or Spirit or Guist evolving through nature and through human history what Emerson called the progressive God now all these theories suggest that nature is an arc tending towards higher moral forms or nature is a kind of addad or escalator going towards higher moral forms um of course Darwinism in the middle of the 19th century was a challenge to these ideas of natural moral progress uh in the darwinian universe there is no higher or better in nature there’s no ladder inevitably going towards higher forms instead Nature’s more like a branching tree going in all kinds of different directions and you can’t call any of those directions higher or better they’re just more fit to particular circumstances so this is a challenge to the idea of a moral uh Cosmos

that naturally evolves towards higher forms or better forms nonetheless the Triumph of Darwinism in the middle of the 19th century inspired countless more progressivist and spiritual versions of evolution to arise substitute religions which try to find new sources of meaning myth ethics and purpose in an evolutionary universe and the philosopher

Mary Midgley and many others have written about this kind of idea of evolutionary religions these science religions appeal to the authority of evolution much as previous religions appeal to the authority of God God in in evolution sometimes become somewhat interchangeable uh terms what would be some examples of evolutionary spiritualities before World War II um you could talk about Herbert Spencer’s religion of the unknowable uh nich’s Cult of the Uber mench of course this you know n as as Peter will tell us was not really a

a champion of anything like organized religion but nonetheless many many of his followers took up this idea of uh the coming Uber mench and turned it into a kind of evolutionary cult uh Ernst heckel’s monism uh bergson rry bergson’s ideas of Creative Evolution uh several figures in the htic Order of the Golden Dawn believe in this idea that uh they are staring Evolution towards the creation of super beings like wise theosophy and anthroposophy have this idea of uh spiritual Evolution leading towards higher forms of humans higher root races uh three arabindo integral

Examples of Evolutionary Spirituality

yoga also has this idea that Evolution can be steered towards the creation of higher Spiritual Beings

um you find a similar idea in Tad dardan’s evolutionary Christian mysticism

and in Julian huxley’s evolutionary humanism uh which he later called uh transhumanism um

likewise in Buck’s Cosmic Consciousness which some of you might have read which I’ll I’ll talk a little bit about later uh and how about

after World War II you also still find these kind of evolutionary spiritualities thriving uh like

the human potential movement of aldus Huxley; Abraham maslow.

Michael Murphy one of the founders of of eselin – that’s him in a photo with Huxley and many others like Osho for example who are part of that human potential movement um

The transpersonal psychology of Stan gr [Grof] is also somewhat something of an evolutionary spirituality

This idea that humans have the potential uh to evolve to a higher stage of Consciousness at a species level.

Commentary from Michael Hoffman:

Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory Warns About, or Exemplifies, Spiritual Narcissism?

  • [I am most focused on Ken Wilber 1977-1988.
  • I have read Ken Wilber into 1990s, including Andrew Cohen’s magazine What Is Enlightenment?
  • I have not followed goings-on within the field of Integral Theory.

I don’t know if grandiose “us above them” framing comes from Ken Wilber, or from followers and the Integral TheoryTM Marketing dept.

Imagine for comparison: ]

We in the Elite EgodeathTM Community Stand Above the Little People and Are More Evolved

[“We are more evolved than them” is not how I think. I think in terms of “my theory is better than anyone else’s theory and is certainly the way forward”, not “I am/ we are superior to other people and more evolved.”

You agree we must save man/ planet/ earth, therefore, you agree to make me Cosmic Dictator, infinite baggage attached.

Common-core mysticism and perennialism:

  • I only agree with a certain aspect the seed idea, as I define it, not as someone else defines it.
  • I disagree with all other aspects of its Baggage Attached and its bad theory of Transcendent Knowledge (nondual unity oneness, self is illusion, get rid of ego, etc – the things recent Tim Freke rejects). I mostly agree with the rejections Freke does, though I more transform and correct those off-base ideas, than simply recoil against them.

– Michael Hoffman

Rather, my thinking and attitude is:]

The Egodeath Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism is the Correct Model and Is the Way Forward as an Explanatory Model of Psilocybin Transformation

[The Egodeath theory of psychedelic eternalism is superior as an explanatory model of Psilocybin transformation, compared to historical esotericism, and compared to Integral Theory.

explanatory model
e-m

— Michael Hoffman]

The presenter continues:

Ken Wilbur’s integral theory is another example of an postwar evolutionary spirituality

the you get uh 80 spiritual influences like Barbara Marx hubard and Andrew Cohen who championed forms of evolutionary spirituality

there’s actually a group called The evolutionary leaders which includes figures like well hubbed before she died and deack chakra and that’s still uh active

and then you get um modern transhumanists and proponents of what um Emil I think Tor I pronounced correctly is he calls Tes real

I don’t know if some of you might have seen um Nisha Devo’s recent paper on this but Tes real is the kind of uh different philosophies that are popular in Silicon Valley at the moment like transhumanism extropianism, singularitarianism cosmin and R rationalism

all of which have this idea that humans uh can evolve into superhumans or can invent new technologies super intelligences these varieties of evolutionary spirituality share two um Central ideas:

  • first that it’s possible and desirable to combine science and spirituality or religion into a new synthesis, a kind of empirical spirituality.

And this it is believed could eventually replace Christianity and other traditional religions and become a global religion of the future.

  • And secondly this idea that human evolution is an ongoing process which can be guided to higher and better forms.

Apostles of evolutionary spirituality think humans have the potential to evolve into Super beings called things like

  • the new man
  • the ubermen
  • homod Deus,
  • the coming race,
  • the future human
  • the transhuman
  • the self-actualized person
  • or perhaps a collective stage of Consciousness such as
  • the new spheres [noosphere?]
  • super intelligence
  • the super mind or
  • the singularity

Believers in evolutionary spirituality typically have a lamarian [Lamarkian?] view of evolution

Lamar uh before Darwin thought that uh humans can develop physical mental or or spiritual characteristics and then pass them on to Future descendants

so it’s this idea of inherited characteristics

the famous example is that a blacksmith might develop uh big muscles in their work and then their children will inherit those big muscles

now in evolutionary spirituality it’s more common to have this idea that you can attain uh a new State of Consciousness, a higher state of consciousness, and that this will then Mark an evolution not just for you as an individual but for your species.

You’ll be the kind of first Bud of a of a new higher species

and you can attain that through like [non-drug?] yoga or meditation or or psychedelics

so one example of this um is Cosmic Consciousness a book by the Canadian psychiatrist Richard Morris Buck which came out um in I think 1901 or 1900

Buck believed that certain special humans particularly him and his friends were attaining this new higher state of Consciousness, this experiences of cosmic Consciousness, and these weren’t just random spiritual experiences, this was actually a kind of evolutionary unfolding uh of a new species, a higher species um and that these um this new species these kind of uh Peak experiences would become more and more common

uh and these uh

They were Superior to Homo sapiens

He thought as as we are to dogs, and that eventually this new spiritually enlightened race will dominate the earth, and the old species will die off.

So there’s a fusion of kind of darwinian or or or or some kind of evolutionary theory with spirituality and this idea of a new species emerging.

And it’s often suggested in evolutionary spirituality that spiritual techniques like yoga meditation and psychedelics can speed up Evolution for a few special people, and through them for the entire species.

And this is an idea that’s been put forward by everyone from

  • Albert Hoffman to
  • Alders and Julian Huxley to
  • Humphrey Osman
  • Timothy liry
  • Ralph mner
  • Robert Anton Wilson
  • Terren McKenna
  • Stan gr
  • Rick doblin
  • and other leading psychedelic thinkers

[Jan Irvin around 2009 interviewed all psychedelics advocates and was horrified at their Social Engr’g, and wrote expose article series The Secret History of Magic Mushrooms, & podcast video series, he changed from Gnostic Media to Logos Media, demonized Psilocybin, & stayed silent on his pet Amanita -Michael Hoffman]

So it’s a very common idea that psychedelics can uh Advance human evolution.

Pros and Cons of the Evolutionary Spirituality Idea

Now I’m now going to point out four moral uh traps in evolutionary spirituality but it’s worth saying that:

There are things to celebrate in this spiritual tradition:

  • The synthesis of Science and spirituality
  • The attempt to kind of develop an empirical spirituality,

which you know has been an effort ever since William James to to rather than for science to ignore things like spiritual experiences to integrate them to study them

and that’s I think what you know an effort that many of us are are involved in um

likewise evolutionary spirituality has an optimistic vision of human potential of our capacity to to to rise up and to and to and and to be uh you know live longer to be happier to be better better beings.

However uh I do see certain kind of pitfalls in this tradition as well which I highlight to try and help people in this tradition perhaps uh avoid them for example uh I’m going to I’m going to highlight four um the first is is spiritual narcissism now most religions can lead to a certain smugness or narcissism in those who see themselves as

the elect as the pure as the chosen ones

[= ppl who know Egodeath theory] those chosen to know psychedelic eternalism aka helpless prisoners frozen in rock; {kidnapped}, imprisoned in cosmic rock, enslaved by the rock; {snake frozen in rock} – and then lifted out, but only the spirit part is lifted; soul remains in fixed stars/ cosmic rock frozen into. – Michael Hoffman]

but I think that evolutionary spirituality could be particularly prone to narcissism or at least its own particular variant of it because its followers think they’re not just morally better because they pray in the right way or eat in the right way or that kind of thing they also think they’re biologically Superior and possibly even a whole different species um and another reason they can be prone to narcissism is there’s

a rejection of humility um this is that you see it in in n and many of his uh descendants uh that humility is for the weak humility is hypocritical that you should be um proud of your superiority um this is idea that we are the gods we are we you know there’s no God Beyond us we are the gods so there’s a worship of the future human but often that that involves a worship for on S invariably um proponents of evolutionary spirit spirituality think that there’s a hierarchy in

nature that some humans are more of alled and they almost invariably think that that includes them so they and their friends are in this kind of 5% at the top of the hierarchy of nature so for example here’s a quote from Ken Wilbur’s online course superhuman uh he says a small percentage of the human population around 5% is now undergoing a Quant leap um to this emerging stage of evolution these rare individuals from every corner of the globe are now blazing a new evolutionary Trail

for all of us and breaking through to new levels of consciousness and capabilities beyond anything that humans have ever experienced before and I’ve interviewed kind of you know uh ex ex followers of Wilber people like Jamie will who talk about how often uh in integral Theory there can be a tendency to feeling quite puffed up like we are this top 5% we are the special ones and everyone else is is just more basic um or here’s another example this is a speech by Abraham maslo that he made to some Silicon Valley Executives he says it has been suggested

that only about 5% of the general population are active agents his idea of these kind of self-actualized individuals they are the ones who run themselves and the world it is very clear to to me that every single member of this group are one of those active agents so there he is flattering his corporate audience uh and here’s uh James Oro another psychedelic writer um he writes he wrote in in one of his books we are the sharpen spear head of humanity we are the ones who have had what the psychologist Abraham masle described as the absolute Peak experience the ultimate achievement of

Being Human something that only occurs for a tiny fraction of the human pop we are the 5% who have to help human Humanity move into its next phase the recognition of our own divine origins so I think there’s this tendency to narcissism to seeing yourself as the biologically Superior elect secondly this can be accompanied with a contempt for those you see it at the bottom of the spiritual natural spiritual biological hierarchy for those for the unfit or less evolved masses again you could put some of this at at Nature’s door he saw nature is

hierarchal and those at the bottom of the hierarchy are a waste of space um the pitiful masses um I don’t know if any of you have read uh John Ker’s excellent book uh the intellectual and the masses but it’s a brilliant uh kind of analysis of um in modernist culture of how many modernist intellectuals had you know took from nature or developed for themselves this kind of contempt uh for the masses uh you see it in from DH Lawrence or in oldest Huxley or in Virginia wolf um so for example oldest Huxley wrote about 99.5% of the entire population of the planet are as stupid as Philistine as the great masses of the English the important thing it seems to me is not to attack the 99.5% except for exercise but to try to see that the .5% survives keeps its quality up to the highest possible level and if possible dominates the rest sometimes this spiritual biological hierarchy is seen as racial in evolutionary spirituality not always but occasionally for example in theosophy

and anthroposophy and other more kind of um fascist forms of German theosophy uh certain races are seen as more spiritually evolved than others uh and other races are seen as more animalistic or even uh demonic this contempt uh for the unevolved masses in New Age culture can still be found in the Psychedelic counterculture um after World War II so Abraham maslo wrote for example only a small proportion of the human population gets to the point of identity or selfhood or full humanness or self-actualization it is perfectly true that the mass of society is is still like a dead weight um and you see it in psychedelic culture as well this elitism we are the elect and everyone else they’re the Unturned on Square ignorant masses so this is Tom Wolf writing in the Electric Kool-Aid AET test

about the marry pranksters he writes the world was simply and sheerly divided into the aware those who had had the experience of being vessels of the Divine and a great mass of the unaware the unmusical the unattuned consciously the aware were never snobbish towards the unaware but in fact most of that great jellyfish blob of straight Souls looked like hopeless cases you can see some of this kind of idea of a spiritual biological hierarchy in some of Timothy L’s work uh particularly

the strange books that he wrote in the 1970s like uh intelligence agents for example um in that book this is a graph from that book where he talks about um a kind of a genetic uh hierarchy between different cultures with Africa and Asia at the bottom and then eventually kind of the Californian future humans this this this new Superior race which he thought was emerging in California which would eventually fly off and populate uh space and L wrote the folks of the old world inhabit pre-editing Europeans and Africans and Asians are our own animal Origins still obsessed

with territorial conflict the Africans are thus 2 million years behind California by the by uh theosophy believed that the kind of new Superior race of humans would would evolve in California so there’s always been this idea of the future humans uh you know this this kind of Master race evolving in in California um I don’t know how familiar you are with with a show or Bagan rajnish or how many of you saw the Netflix documentary about him but you can really see in in his uh kind of uh Nan spirituality this idea this worship of the superhumans including him and his followers and this

you know uh violent contempt for the uh for the uh ignorant masses uh whether that’s in America or anywhere else so Osho said you know his his his talk are full of comments like this scientifically the average mental age of a human being is below 13 those who are [ __ ] will criticize you condemn you ignore them they are already stepping into their graves soon they will disappear now the third of these four moral pitfalls is social Darwinism and malthusianism the idea that um those at the bottom of the spiritual biological hierarchy should be allowed to die off for the good of you know so that higher humans

can evolve in traditional Christianity there’s this idea that God loves the poor the sick the weak and wretched and therefore we owe them charity we should try to um you know uh help them and feed them and and and and so forth um what happened in the in the 18th century uh from molus on in this new kind of evolutionary uh spirituality was this idea that it you know in contrast we should let the weak and sick die off so higher forms can emerge there’s this kind of progressive spiritual unfolding taking place so if you um charitably support uh the weak the sick the you know and so on

you’re just getting in the way of this natural evolutionary process um you see see that in Herbert Spencer for example um he wrote the whole effort of nature is to get rid of the unfit to clear the world of them to make room for better uh n likewise wrote far too many live and far too long they hang on their branches would that a storm came to shake all this rot and worm food from the tree um Osho is another extreme example of this kind of um alusan ISM and social Darwinism he wrote I want to be finished with the whole past completely um I want it to be erased completely only then the new humanity is possible a new world a new man this world is not worth saving it will be better if the third world war happens and

destroys this whole stupid Humanity so one can come across many examples of this idea of that kind of there should be this natural culling or shedding of the of the Lo forms um this is Barbara Marx hubard who was one of the most uh influential champions of evolutionary spirituality in the 80s 90s and early naughties uh in in California uh and her writings often express this kind of idea um she wrote individually we can choose to embrace options for evolutionary choices such as longevity space migration and evolved Consciousness those who choose these paths will evolve differently from those who choose to remain in the terrestrial mamalian life cycle just as Neanderthal man passed away so too will self-centered Homo sapiens retire once it has finished the work of preparing the way for homo universalis

we will weed out the unworkable uh from the workable and one still sees these attitudes a bit in modern uh transhumanism the idea that there’s going to be a bifurcation of human ity some will evolve and become Cosmic Immortal super beings and some will not evolve and they will uh that’s a kind of evolutionary dead end so here’s Christian angam who is um you know the the one of the leading investors in psychedelics he set up atti he’s the leading investor in compass Pathways and he has said in one interview Humanity could split up into two species because you have a part of humanity who says hey bring it on let’s fly to Mars if you want to go to Mars you need to change your bodies we’re going to have to modify everyone knows it but there might be a part of humanity who says this is not for me I don’t want to merge with machines so Humanity might split into two species so

there’s this idea of the Sorting of the fit from the unfit a natural selection of of the fit from the unfit uh and so the original kind of eugenic test would be war and reproductive Fitness uh then it was the IQ test and the exam now embryonic Fitness tests and I and I just wonder if sometimes one gets hints of that in psychedelic culture this idea of psychedelics as a kind of evolutionary test of your Fitness which sorts the the fit from the unfit can you pass the acid test can you take the heroic dose uh and I think you also saw some aspects of this kind of spiritual manthus ISM during the pandemic in the ableism of Wellness culture and New Age culture here Robert F Kennedy the kind of uh antivaxer in Chief um so just this idea that you know let let nature take its course let Co take its course uh the strong and and the fit and the well and the able they will naturally survive and this is a kind of natural process which will um clear off the weak and the infirm okay

the final moral Pitfall that I’m going to talk about is uh spiritual eugenics um now the sense of a coming bacation between the elect and the passed over is not unique to evolutionary spirituality but in abrahamic religions it is God uh who selects the wheat from the chaff the sheep from the goats in evolutionary spirituality sometimes it is humans who select the fit from the unfit it is the new Priests of evolution spirituality

the scientist priests as n put it the ruling case of the future must now take the place of God they deliver the physiologically botched by teaching them the doctrine of Swift death now not all proponents of evolutionary spirituality support Eugenics a few actively opposed it like um William James and Alfred Russell Wallace for example but many uh champ I of evolutionary spirituality did support eugenics in some form and of course there are many varieties of of eugenics so for example Nicha George Bernard Shaw Ernst hle Julian and Alis Huxley

HG Wells Gerald herd WB Yates aliser Crowley and several other members of the Golden Dawn Rudolph Steiner and several other German theosophist Yan smutz the father of holism several members of the society for psychical research sh rindo uh the Californian spiritual botanist Luther Burbank John Harvey Kellogg the kind of key figure in American Wellness history Alexis Carell uh the French Nobel prizewinning scientist and and and and spiritual Guru Tad Des shadan all of them supported um eugenic policies in some form or other and even after World War II even after uh the Nazis uh eugenic atrocities

you still had people quietly supporting um eugenic policies in uh evolutionary spirituality like Abraham maslo never publicly but in his private papers he did say that um there should be a kind of global regulation of reproduction there should be a a kind of body of scientists who choose who does who do and don’t get to reproduce uh Alis Huxley likewise supported uh eugenic policies in his talks and writing right to the end of his life Osho very explicitly said uh there should be a kind of global regulation of of reproduction to ensure the evolution of super beings um the

the far right um white supremacist William Luther Pierce also put forward his own weird version of evolutionary spirituality which was very much embraced um Eugenics so let’s talk a little bit about eugenics it was um called the religion of the future and it’s really a prime example of one of these evolutionary religions that emerged after the Triumph of Darwinism uh in in the 1880s it was actually the word Eugenics was coined in I think 1883 um by Francis gton Charles Darwin’s cousin uh the same year that Nicha um published thus spake zarathustra so you have these two kind of uh visions of the future super beinging um so it was a new Creed I think this is often forgotten by people who study Eugenics just as a kind of Public Health or a medical movement it was also very much a religious movement it was called a Creed by gton he talked about a Jihad uh for fitter humans it was run by scientist priests aimed at producing superhumans new

Apollos and dianas um this worship of the future super beings was combined with a homicidal contempt and Loathing for those deemed unfit who supposedly threatened the human race with Extinction or descent into idiocy um there are many forms of eugenics positive Eugenics which is encouraging those deemed fit to breed more and negative eugenics which was trying to discourage those who were deemed unfit from breeding at all there could be voluntary and involuntary forms of eugenics there were less and more extreme forms of it so it could be everything from health education to uh forcible sterilization or euthanasia it was often racist and imperialist um but not always there are many varieties of eugenics eugenic thinking was extremely popular from the 1870s to the 1940s and taken up by a whole host of movements there were feminist eugenicists socialist eugenicists environmentalist eugenicists it was big in the fitness and body meling movement there are even eugenesis you can find in the Harlem Renaissance or in uh

The Mexican nationalism uh there’s a fascinating book called uh the cosmic race La Raza cosmica by a Mexican author who thinks that uh Mexican mesos are the kind of super race of the future so there are many varieties of eugenic thinking now often in this era um various activities like yoga bodybuilding psychedelics or organic farming were promoted using eugenic retoric that they would help um uh the species to evolve into a into a kind of higher species for example in 1941 the German poet solder physician gotfried Ben called for a systematic educational effort in the direction of conscious enhancement of Vitality one could by increasing Visionary States say with mesculin or Hashi Supply the race with a stream of spiritual insights which could lead to a new creative period so um Ben there is calling for a a state program of uh you know drugs to improve the Vitality of uh the German race now it’s not really kind of typical Eugenics he’s not talking there about controlling who does or doesn’t reproduce so I think sometimes when people are looking at the overlap of of of movements with Eugenics they can say well because some people were into both bodybuilding and Eugenics or both organic farming and

Eugenics therefore you know bodybuilding is eugenic or organic farming is eugenic that’s not what I’m saying using eugenic rhetoric does not mean a particular movement essentially is uh eugenic however often those who use eugenic rhetoric do also actively support eugenic policies as um gotfried Ben did several other important figures in psychedelic history supported authoritarian eugenic uh policies and I think that’s interesting and and and worth of kind of comment and study like um havlock Ellis who did the first British psychedelic uh experiments in 1898 or so likewise WB Yates one of the you know one of his um participants or yates’s uh colleague in the htic Order of the Golden Dawn alist Crowley uh hdl’s and Julian Huxley these uh early transhumanists who talked about uh using chemical and drugs as a means to kind of uh help evolution advance and help the evolution of super beings and they also very much promoted uh Eugenics as um as a means to to help the evolution of super beings

Eugenics had a completely Central role in Julian huxley’s uh Neo religion of evolutionary humanism when he became the first director general of UNESCO he he immediately published a Manifesto saying we should make evolutionary humanism the new kind of religion of UNESCO and and and eugenic should be at the heart of that I mean that’s so startled people that that was the reason that um Julian Huxley was only a one-term director general of UNESCO um his brother Alis suley likewise um as I’ve said supported eugenic policies he supported involuntary uh sterilization before World War II

after World War II he still supported um positive Eugenics this idea that um we should use techniques like um freezing the sperm of of of geniuses and then using it to create uh Superior babies I mean that appears in his last novel Island where a certain proportion of the population of Island are created through genius sperm banks um and in fact one of Julian huxley’s students uh helped to create a genius sperm bank which existed in in California for a few years and people could go to this geni it was in Montesito uh and people could go to this genius sperm bank and

select the idea was the sperm of of Nobel Prize winners but I I’m not sure they got any to actually contribute their sperm and thereby ensure that their children were Superior children and in fact Rupert sheldrick uh who was a friend of Julian huxley’s nephew uh sorry his son Francis Huxley told me that Francis Huxley often received letters from people claiming to be the descendence of Julian Huxley from uh from from sperm banks I don’t know if he really did donate his sperm to these sperm banks anyway this is a bit of a digression um

Abraham maslo also supported uh eugenic policies privately he also thought that um you know there should be Global regulation of who does and doesn’t reproduce um as did Osho um and so I think there’s this illiberal authoritarian tendency which one can find in evolutionary spirituality the idea that we must upgrade Humanity we must uh enable the evolution of superbeings even if the unevolved masses resist um there can be the promotion of illiberal medical spiritual Utopias and I’m fasc fated by the parallels I see between Alis huxley’s Brave New World from 1931 this obviously authoritarian static Society managed by um by you know scientists in which reproduction is completely uh managed but

I see similarity between that and his Utopia his hippie Utopia of Island which is also a completely static Society managed by scientists priests and it’s also a eugenic Society um so just finally one still does find examples of uh Eugenics uh from the 70s on but it tends to be um liberal Eugenics with the uh Evolution with the development of uh Technologies of genetic modification Eugenics became more sophisticated uh it was less about uh governments controlling who can and can’t reproduce and sterilizing those deemed unfit and instead there were these new genetic Technologies

which supposedly um could upgrade uh uh both embryos and even kind of um already born people so these were uh very much embraced uh by certain kind of Californian Visionaries like Timothy liry from the uh 1970s on uh and ly in his writings of the 70s says what very ious transhumanists have said since the 1970s and various extropia and and so on they uh Larry said let us upgrade our minds our bodies and our genes with these new technologies like psychedelics or stem cell research or genetic modification and if you don’t let us do that we’ll go offshore or offworld and create our own libertarian um Utopias of superhumans so um

when he was in falson prison Timothy liry um wrote this extraordinary book uh called Terror to he claimed to be channeling messages from Aliens and the aliens uh you know of course with liry one can never tell to what extent this is a joke or not but uh he claimed that he had a mission uh to attract uh 5,000 uh Superior human beings uh who would who would man a space shuttle that would go into space and Seed a new higher species he got very into this idea um that humans could evolve into smarter more intelligent uh you know quasi Immortal uh uh species uh and that uh and that he and others could be the kind of the seeds of this new species so this is one of the illustrations from Tera to it says the crew of Teru selects itself the way the genetic code builds up a chain of elements so there’s a whole Passage here about

a selection of the fittest most beautiful uh and so on for this crew this is reminds me very much of moon rer if any of you have seen that Bond film um so psychedelics and liberal Eugenics today many of the leading biotech investors in psychedelics uh today also invest in genetic modification technology aimed at creating a superior longer living smarter species people like Peter teal Christine anger Steve jeret and Elon Musk now there’s clearly a moral difference between liberal Eugenics where people are choosing to use uh genetic modification Technologies and authoritarian Eugenics where uh you know reproductive policies are imposed on people involuntarily

however perhaps new moral issues emerge from this new liberal uh Eugenics like for example safety but also Dem Democratic access to new medical Technologies is this just what Douglas rashkov calls survival of the richest that only the extremely wealthy uh get access to these new technologies that they kind of retreat from the collapse of of modern societies to their um psychedelic genetic ashrams to their gated spiritual communities and and you know to try and turn themselves into the Super beings who will emerge from their gated communities uh to repopulate the world after the kind of climat Apocalypse so in conclusion

I hope you agree with me at least uh that evolutionary spirituality is a significant and under researched cultural frame uh for New Age spirituality and for psychedelics and Western culture you I’m sure some of you will disagree with some aspects of this rather broad picture that I’ve painted but nonetheless I think you’ll agree at the very least that this is a very interesting and influential frame for Western spirituality and for psychedelic culture it has deep historical roots and is still very active today in various forms particularly in Silicon Valley transhumanism and I hope you also agree that it has some moral pitfalls uh spiritual narcissism contempt for the less evolved masses social Darwinism and malthusianism this idea of letting the weak die off

attendance to spiritual uh Eugenics and to illiberal Medical spiritual Utopias once again I do not say that everyone who believes in evolutionary spirituality inevitably falls into this moral pitfalls only that one often sees um people doing so could there be a less elitist less authoritarian more democratic and more pluralist form of evolutionary spirituality yes for example William James in some ways he believed in a kind of evolutionary form of spirituality but it was pluralist

it didn’t believe that Evolution evolves up One ladder one escalator in one inevitable Direction but instead in multiple different directions and that we should encourage what John Stewart Mill called experiments in living eccentric different kind of experiments because it may develop new potentialities new kind of capacity um William James’s version of evolutionary spirituality is very Humane he didn’t see himself as one of the elect he knew he had his own kind of psychological foibles he was anti- eugenic he wrote um he reminds me of Thomas Huxley who was older and Julian huxley’s grandfather the great biologist he was also an an antien and Thomas Huxley said um don’t we I’m paraphrasing from memory but don’t we all all of us have days when we could classify as one of the unfit I mean

Thomas Huxley had was prone to like William James depressive episodes so both of them knew that they could classify as the unfit they could find themselves you know um forcibly sterilized under the wrong conditions and I I feel that with with with people like Julian and Alis Huxley as well both of whom were actually prone to this inherited psychological stability and you know Julian Huxley suffered from um bipolar disorder and I see many of the kind of champions of eugenic evolutionary spirituality I think they were maybe sometimes projecting their own insecurities and instabilities onto the population saying th it’s those people out there who are unfit anyway how finally does all of this relate to um our main research which is on challenging psychedelic experiences what I’ve been working on for the you know with with aren and many others for the last um few years well I mean I I became interested in the topic of challenging psychedelic experiences when I had a a bad trip when I was 18 uh as a result of which I developed post-traumatic stress disorder social anxiety and I really felt like a kind of psychological Basket Case for several years and it was at right at a time where I was very into uh figures like ner and DH Lawrence and reading people like Lawrence and N I mean they tended

to say if you if you’re kind of damaged then that’s it you’re a dead end you should probably just kill yourself so that was you know I I I kind of rejected um that way of thinking I was looking for something more compassionate which could help me uh accept myself accept my wounds and to heal I had this feeling also very much of having kind of failed the acid test that I had had all these wonderful psychedelic experiences

but now I had the bad experience and I’d kind of damaged myself I was a kind of failure and I think sometimes um you know people who have bad trips which lead them feeling damaged can feel tremendous kind of Shame and guilt and so on after these kinds of bad experiences and I think this evolutionary ethos can still pervade psychedelic culture are you a member of The evolutionary elect are you one of these future superhumans or are you genetically unstable and inferior like William James I have compassion for the Misfits because I identify with them more than with

the evolutionary elect and that’s why I point out the elitist and illiberal tendencies in evolutionary spirituality and New Age culture more generally that’s it thank you very much thank you thank you very much Jules I think that was some very interesting food for thought for everyone um are there any questions to start in the room here yes Ste Joel thanks a lot for that I take my hat off to your contrarian powers for choosing that particular Target and eviscerating it so comprehensively I think I got a couple of questions actually one one is more about the challenging experiences project the first one is more about spiritual narcism narcissism s

orry Etc I feel like I’m kind of shouting up to you over there of course I’m not um the drug itself and the characteristics of the well I say drug psychedelic saying LSD to the C has that contributed to this culture if if you think that um you Brave culture has a element of ecstasy flowing through it and other subcultures are also said to have been influenced by their favorite drugs um so is is the question whether the drugs themselves might have contributed to some of these kind of characteristics like characteristics um

I’m thinking for example um inflation could be attributed yeah and also um that said certainly when I was younger and we were all taking ass it was very um you know it’s just us and no one else must know what we’re doing because then we’ll be in trouble and that kind of contributes to a sort of tribalism mini tribalism I I I agree I think that um psychedelics Can often lead to this sense of are we are the special ones we are the initiated uh we are the elect um and that can take you know so I agree with that and that can take different forms I think it’s possible to to think that without believing an evolutionary spirituality particularly um so I’ve just been researching this buo cult in

Mexico and um you know extraordinary story this Miami real estate agents smoked 5 Meo DMT uh started a retreat center in Mexico became you know smoked so much of it every day that he became convinced he was Jesus uh and you know uh his followers he would smoke 5md 5mo DMT give it to his followers in this retreat center and then go up and shout in their face who am I and they had to say you’re Jesus anyway so that’s an example of kind of clearly ego inflation and and cultish

which didn’t involve evolutionary spirituality but I think you know Evolution it that kind of spiritual narcissism goes quite well with evolutionary spirituality as well anyway to answer your question briefly yes I think that there are some aspects of the drug which do seem to lead to Ego inflation and therefore kind of contribute to this kind of narcissism and I was on the call the other day about the experiences project which was great and um that you you briefly mentioned there about feedback you were getting from the reports about experiences that weren’t bad trips as such they were just sort of not very exciting or interesting or enchanting or magical and you know I’ve had bad trips myself but I’ve

certainly had more of those and what are we going to call them um what was it there’s mystical experiences and there’s experiences like meh that’s why some call them like me nothing very much I just wonder if you could talk a bit more about maybe AR could as well about you know those what what you’re getting back about those particular reports the Mir the Mir trips well yeah sure I’ll hand over to aren but I mean in brief they don’t show up so much in our survey because we kind of particularly were asking about extended difficulties um but people sometimes certainly of the categories in our survey what that we did in

our thematic analysis of all these 600 responses was feelings of disappointment particularly if people tried psychedelics for mental health and they feel like they’re in the Last Chance Saloon and they’ve tried everything else and then they try you know psychedelics either in Trials or in the underground and it doesn’t work and and they feel even worse so we did come across that um yeah aren do you want to add anything yeah I think this is what I would um think in relation to this may experiences as well that people can see negative effects afterwards because of all these expectations that the hype creates so in that sense the L perhaps with people that talk about they have passed this asset test they’ve had this talent and experiences and they’re like this new person now uh it’s a matter of comparison

but yeah I wouldn’t say that these are the cases that we see that come with the most difficulty thanks guys um any more questions yes yeah I find that talk really interesting and I realized you were talking about the critical aspects of evolutionary spirituality but I I just wanted to ask you about how evolution is conceived um in these context so evolution is usually that species and an environment and fitting together um what what can we say about the environment of spiritual Evolution I mean you you’ve concentrated on you know Wold eugenic breathing programs

but when I’ve tried to look into this superficially in the past I I had the feeling that that wasn’t um what was steering The evolutionary process so for example hugley at some point mentions universal mind so the evolution is kind of tuning into something like that does that make any sense to you is that the way yeah yes you’re right I mean darwinian Evolution would be the idea of of Fitness to certain circumstances to certain conditions um spiritual Evolution it it it it’s more about so you know it’s kind of a Global Evolution the evolution of the human species I suppose you could say you know both that that it’s connected I think they sometimes see it connected to certain historical conditions like things like

the evolution of of of a global Society so say say Shan there’s the sense of the evolution of the new sphere is connected to new technologies as well to the kind of you know or to the emergence of the internet um to you know they’re often supporters of evolutionary spirituality not always but but quite often they are um globalists people like HG Wells and Julian huy and Alis hxy they think there’s going to be a the evolution of a global Society Beyond natural differences um and

and then eventually that will be you know that we will start evolving into space we will become these Cosmic beings and this is the next step so in that sense there is that that the sense of that spiritual evolution is connected to kind of um environmental conditions and particularly to technological conditions um but then you know there are other there are so many varieties of it so this is one of the challenges like there are kind of um racist um proponents of evolutionary spirituality like particularly you know Germans and Nazis who would say well you know nor Europeans uh have have evolved to be the masterace because of particular conditions because of the cold and so on um or this this um

Jose vasconcelos he was the Mexican minister of Education he wrote this extraordinary book Raza cosm the cosmic race and he thought that Mexicans uh with the with a superior you know Master race because because in Latin America you had the throne together of all these different races and that leads to kind of uh this um that interbreeding of races leads to kind of superior humans a similar idea is put forward about like why the future human would evolve in California because America is this breeding pot and and the fittest humans moved to America uh and therefore you got this kind of you know genetic selection of the fittest and

that’s why you know the superior beings end up in California and especially in Silicon Valley so I don’t know if that’s answering your question but that’s just some of the ways that environmental conditions can feed in in in people’s theories with this evolution of the kind of future human I mean that’s a very kind of modern materialist version of the environments in which evolution is happening I just had the impression yeah from looking at people like Huxley or even Michael Murphy there something more Spacey going on that this kind oftion was latching onto something which wasn’t you know oh yes that’s that’s that’s clearly true like they there’s often this idea of not just Evolution but involution so there’s not just the the EV evolution of of material forms to

higher levels but there’s an involution of Spirit uh from from the Divine from mind at large from the kind of you know uh super mind uh and so on or from you know there’s all kinds of again varieties of it but yes absolutely this is spiritual theories of evolutionary spirituality Are Spiritual they believe also in some kind often in some kind of uh Transcendent uh you know God guiding this evolutionary process and interacting with it and uh this question also um made me think about uh

the connection with nature itself and how like this Evolution what role are we seeing humans play in relation to the rest of nature but perhaps this relat we have a question online from Oliver so this talk Oliver says mostly focused on the issu stemming from worshiping a super individual drawing from a western individualist tradition I’m wondering if jul has any knowledge about whether there are equivalents of this in more collectivist cultures or terms that’s very interesting in some ways you can see it again this is the varieties of evolutionary spirituality you can see it as leading to a kind of individualism um

a worship of the Uber mench the rugged individual who exists separate from massman uh who doesn’t need the welfare state who doesn’t need uh any state at all uh you know said something like there where the state ends um the the the higher being emerges um so but you can you know you can also see it from another direction as extremely collectivist so sometimes um you know champions of evolutionary spirituality were very ecological in their thinking they thought

we need to see the human species as a whole um and and and think about you know how to guide the human species to higher forms um so you know people like Julian Huxley and HG Wells and Ernst hle these were the champions of ecological thinking in the you know the the the 1880s to the 19 30s because they thought you think you know because they argued we need to see humans as a species and we need to manage the species much as we like manage livestock much as we like manage uh natural resources they argued we need to manage the human species um by by encouraging the fittest to uh reproduce more and

by discouraging the the the least fit um in inverted commas to to reproduce at all so yes in some ways you can see um this can be taken in highly individualist forms libertarian forms um I don’t owe anything to other people I reject the state just leave me and my friends alone to develop our libertarian Utopia or it could be developed in highly collectivist forms where individual rights have to be disregarded for the good of the species thank you Chris you have a question yeah I thought i’ comment before my question that the the focus on California as a weird transhumanist thing that

there’s a British equivalent called Anglo futurism which is pretty entertaining and uh there’s a lot of good mes about it online Ang futurism I haven’t heard thanks yeah it did the rounds on Twitter like three months ago it’s pretty it’s bad um my question was um your presentation talked a lot about um elitism um and the idea of like the elect the past like some people can make it through the various stages or not um

I’m curious where you draw the line between it being elitism and it being kind of a ritualistic right of passage kind of thing because across the world there are various groups who use varying degrees of substance as a kind of uh becoming a man from a child as it were where does the line sit between those I think that’s a really good question and um it’s one of the the responses I’ve got most you know in The Limited responses I’ve got to this paper um is is people saying well you know is is the idea of an elect or an Elite or in a hierarchy always wrong or bad I I gave a talk on this

at esselin in fact um I got I was invited there for a seminar on the Superhuman by um organized by Jeffrey kple at Rice University and and and Jeff you know his response was firstly religions have always been eugenic they’ve always been concerned with breeding when you think about it it is an interesting way to look at the history of religion but secondly there’s always been this idea of of the elect and of and of higher and lower um and and I and I I I get that point like you you take part in a spiritual practice or a spiritual tradition to try and improve in a certain way you go to a meditation teacher because you think they have something to teach you

you undergo a ritual or initiation or a retreat or these kinds of things to try to develop to advance you know the Buddha said um I am I am awake you know now now here’s a path to become like me so of course there is this in in in most religions this idea that you know you can become higher and better you um so I think that’s that like I said you can find that in most religious Traditions but I think it’s important to to to to build in certain kind of features to make sure that doesn’t develop into kind of um excessively elitist narcissism

and I’ve argued that one of the ways that evolutionary spirituality can lead to kind of rather rigid elitism and narcissism is this idea that we are not just um you know better because we practice this meditation we are essentially better we are biologically Superior as well as um spiritually

and the other thing is I think you know a good a mature spiritual tradition builds in things like humility um and and the sense of like um not glorifying in your superiority but kind of um you know reminding yourself that we’re all flawed as well I think that’s one of the things I respect about Christianity the sense that we all mess up we all we all [ __ ] up and that’s just being human um so yeah so that’s so so I accept the point that that that that several people have made to me in response to this paper which is yes some kind of idea of better or worse is an inevitable part of all spiritual Traditions

but I think a good a wise and mature spiritual tradition builds in certain checks against this tendency to to arrogance and a kind of rigid cased elitism than thank you we we do also have an interesting comment from Bing so because reincarnation and animism are the Core Concepts in our Traditions time Evolution as a process can be taken off from the equation still each life we have is a gift hence a grand expression we should honor so in that sense we’re evolving in this timeline individually or in the community

we are connected with uh thank you B and if you wanted to share anything further as well or what is the tradition that you’re coming from here or um I think Peter you had your hand up earlier I don’t know if that was a comment to question no I was just going to read out um Oliver’s question online so um but I do have a question anyway I suppose um I’m I’m more of a fan of bergson this book you mentioned than you are obviously and

N for that matter and others but anyway um I suppose you know like burson’s critique of evolution was that he wasn’t a theologist but he was halfway there as it were and it seems to me that part of this critique is and I’ve really enjoyed the paper by the way and the presentation now um the part of this critique is based on a form of our current understanding of evolution and I think that our current understanding evolution is I mean it’s

I don’t think it’s wrong but I think there’s more to add to it for example in philosophy of Mind mental causation um is a big problem under a certain Paradigm scientific Paradigm and there’s a lot of arguments to say mental causation should be um sort of uh part should be uh integrated with theory of evolution mental causation relates to teleology the fact the idea that there are purposes within nature and like within a human being you know um there is a purpose

for example to procreate for the species and so on um and bergson’s criticism of um Darwinism the darwinist theory of evolution really was that it exclude completely excludes to theology now I think that’s still an open question I know teolog is not particularly fashionable at the moment but you know I think it’s an open question because it relates to mental causation and so I suppose my my my point is this that um if we do accept the form of teleology in nature then that would actually um have ramifications on understanding

a kind of you know a processual view of nature that it’s not just static and there’s no hierarchy but actually there is some kind of Ideal to which we progress I suppose this this a kind of hegan hegelianism certain extent you know n said um controversially as always um without Hegel there would be no Darwin and I second question really is I wonder and that’s something I’m looking into now like to what extent is Hegel really um influential in our understandings of mysticism

Because you know Cosmic Consciousness from Ed Edward Carpenter people think comes from India which does partly Edward Carpenter’s time there but also I mean you know that was the time of British idealism or British hegelianism where Eternal Consciousness was a common phrase used from Hegel so anyway my question is this um are you you know are you open to the possibility that the theory of evolution is not yet complete and that this might have ramifications on the critique of um transhumanism especially yeah I mean

I am certainly open to to the idea that certain aspects of evolutionary spirituality could be um scientifically valid

um so I’m I’m not really my my my paper is not engaging with its scientific validity um I you know I don’t I don’t get into that like um could be I’m I’m I’m interested in the possibility I agree with you that you know that um kind of there can be narrow forms of Darwinism which don’t leave any place for Consciousness and and for choice I also think that it’s possible I’m I’m making a you know moral critiques

first of all I’m saying look let’s consider thisa these Traditions they’re important so that’s my first argument like they’ve been under researched under commented on these are influential to New Age culture and to psychedelic culture and I think we both agree on that um and you know then secondly I say however that it’s a moral argument really yeah after the kind of just like this is a historical thing and we should kind of you know it’s like it can lead to these kinds of moral issues

but I don’t say that always essentially does um and there are many exceptions like um you know like James’s kind of pluralist evolutionary spirituality there are these different kind of potentialities which can which can evolve and you see that you know on Julian Huxley as well he talks about he was very into bergson uh and he talks about we develop different potentiality through play through experiment which with with bergson

there’s that idea as well isn’t there these these kind of nature uh playing and evolving into these into these different forms and and in not being a kind of rigid escalator it’s more of a kind of emerging experiment so that would be the kind of that more pluralist model of evolutionary spirituality I would I would like more than a kind of this rigid hierarchy and I’m definitely at the top of it yeah sure and again

I don’t I don’t think bergon didn’t in my in my you I haven’t I won’t know him as well as you do but he he certainly wasn’t um he didn’t promote Eugenics at a time when lots of other people because he was you know he was in the psychical research scene and lot of people who supported psychical research did support Eugenics bergson didn’t he seems kind of a Humane person not not not not an elitist not a snob so um yeah so as as as as far as you were saying about um kind of Hegel and mysticism yeah I mean it’s fascinating I you know I haven’t read Hegel I I I I’ve put it off you know out of yeah out of fear but um but yes I think he’s clearly important in this tradition in this idea of a kind of a historical evolution of spirit yeah uh and and and of

Guist so yeah no so I think there’s that you know you’ve opened up a whole kind of worms there of historical research and and scientific and Metaphysical Research as well so thanks a lot well I just say you know finally Peter um I mean I because I I was thinking you a bit because I know we’re both fans of Nature and this paper and this work it does you know it does rather slam nature for his homicidal eugenic Tendencies which I think are you know are are there and I think you know but I’m a I’m a

I also grew up loving nature and I do really you know he’s as as a philosopher he’s almost incomparable in terms of as a stylist so I have this real LoveHate relationship with ness with theory of the dionan aalan you know but I do think there is this dark side to him and yeah I think that we you know it has to we have to confront it for sure he has you know you did pick the worst parts of him but um there’s another side to him as well yeah don’t forget of course he he also was influential on the left as well as the right in terms of power stretches understanding power stretches and so on um but that’s another another

talk anyway thanks a lot for your time thank you and we do have a few more questions in the chat so Rebecca is asking what about the unwell the unfit those with adverse reactions to both psychedelics and prescription drugs what about those with both positive and negative experiences with drugs and spiritual emergencies in this context are we not in need of readdressing how the unwell and therefore the unfit might contribute valuable insights into how we progress as human beings absolutely I I mean I think

One of the one of the serious issues with you know eugenics in the in the 20s was how it just labeled people it labeled people as essentially kind of unfit um you know disregarding the fact that we’re all a mixed of the kind of the well and the unwell and you you know on certain stage in our life we might be very unwell and then we could be later well again and even the you know the very unwell in some ways will often have tremendous gifts uh and and capacities so that kind of sorting of humans into the kind of viable and the nonviable and the fit and the unfit is

One of the most horrible aspects of this um science religion and you know unfortunately I think it did feed into Psychiatry and you know certain kind of pioneering psychiatrists like um like um Asperger for example were also eugenesis so you can have this idea that certain people are just essentially um you know um basket cases that that you know like um in the old idea of psychosis oh you know you’ve had a psychotic episode you know they could include a temporary psychotic episode psychedelics

so I’m afraid you’re just you know you’re you’re um you’re genetically uh inferior uh you’re you’re a basket case you have you you know and and and you have nothing interesting to tell us and your experience has nothing interesting or meaningful to tell us I think thankfully that’s we’re now seeing that that’s a very cruel and outdated um Theory and that you know PE people can have um psychosis like experiences and and still leave lead normal functional lives

and and that you know that sometimes these experiences like psychedelic experiences can be meaningful and and interesting I mean they can also be devastating and and and and um but I so you know I just think it’s interesting we are still very much a um a eugenic culture in all kinds of ways and I think it’s interesting to kind of consider it I

I think all of us really are influenced by eugenic thinking this is not something that happened in in the 1920s we you know it’s it it completely infuses our cultures in in all kinds of ways um but including in in harmful ways and I think we can still see its influence in in um in Psychiatry um can I say something um sorry um I’m just working my way through your breaking open book um Jews and um

reading lots of people’s spiritual emergencies and that’s why I said something about health and um the unwell in relation to what you’re talking about today um which is really worrying me since it’s just uncovered a number of my key philosophers and psychologists and writers as people who potentially supported Eugenics which I find quite terrifying at the minute um for my PhD so I’m a bit scared uh from what you’ve just told us today um but I I think um sorry there’s loads of really amazing points that you’ve raised today I’m also trying to connect that to some of the other research that I’ve been listening to from from you and from Peter as well

I think can I just say I think

If we’ve discovered that bergson wasn’t a eugenicist but Alders Huxley was um can I can I just go back to Peter on that as well um because I’m quite frightened by some of this research I have to say Jules I quite I find it quite frightening that um this many figures who are in in support of eugenics and that kind of split people off into camps of those who could progress and those who couldn’t hence the unfit that is worrying me quite a lot at the minute

Well yeah um it was if if when you when you researched Eugenics it was hugely popular it was hugely popular it was you know if you were an intellectual in in like 1890 to 1910 um you were more likely to support Eugenics than to be against it I mean it was an example of this kind of medical fashion which was so popular it’s very rare to find people who who stood up and spoke against it like um like William James like Thomas Huxley um

like GK Chesterton most people agree with it in some form they might not have believed in involuntary sterilization uh they might have believed you know just in kind of health education you know Pi how to pick a fit partner that kind of thing and we still do that right we still think is this partner you know how how how appropriate are they going to be are they unstable what what would our kids be like um you know we everyone does genetic most people do genetic testings of their fetuses of their of their embryos um

most people now there’s this there’s this technology called um um you know embryo selection where um people who do IVF they get given like you know they do genetic analysis of all the embryos and you can now have the technology to choose an embryo less likely to to get depression when they’re older I I think most people uh would if given the option choose if they were you know said okay here are 10 possible embryos and these ones have the least likelihood of depression many would choose that

and that’s a form of kind of liberal uh Eugenics it’s based on kind of you know personal choice of the parents so but yes you know it it it it you know it has some extremely dark chapters this history extremely dark um but you know because a person supported Eugenics does not mean you know like does not mean that every aspect of their theories is Tainted uh with the kind of you know the the the sin of eugenics so and that we can’t possibly enjoy the writings of Aldis Huxley anymore um

it’s just you know this we have to try and study history somewhat dispassionately as well as as as the evolution of these these ideas and Trends and you know often in ways that we will historically reject decades later um so and we have to try and be careful in our study of it as well and remember that there were many different varieties of it all kinds so I often see it’s such a hot topic now Eugenics that people say oh it’s it’s always white supremacist but it wasn’t always white supremacist you know there all kinds of it there were there people like WB dubis who is the kind of you know famous African-American scholar he also supported Eugen Eugenics so did feminists so did environmentalists so um

it’s literally you know it’s a whole chapter in Western intellectual history not just Western either also in in India and in China and in Russia and in Singapore because we’re all trying to Grapple with how to make sense of evolutionary theory and how to incorporate into our culture and we haven’t figured that out entirely yet particularly as new genetic Technologies emerge so that’s where we are thank you thank you Jules yeah I think definitely worth emphasizing that there is a world of nuance behind calling someone um eugenic supporter or revolutionary spirituality supporter and I think yeah um but we do have two questions that are kind of related between them

and to this so firstly um we have a comment from canila thank you Jules some of the points you make reminded me of some discourses on aasa and ancestral inherited trauma which are perceived as stored in genes and fixable through purs and cleansing do you think this can be related to psychedelic henics and evolutionary spirituality and then if you also wanted to respond to whether because in your doc you didn’t connect the this to psychedelic evangelism as Oliver says he’s wondering if or what sort of connection you see in this in the current trends what current trends psychedelic evangelism

yeah whether you see uh psychedelic evangelin from what I understand in this question as um a connection to this um evolutionary spirituality um and then the discourse on storage in jeans fixable through puring and cleansing that is also popular within this uh psychedelic Renaissance yeah well I mean some of these some of these ideas definitely play out in in in psychedelic culture but in in in weird interesting ways I I haven’t met many people in the in the modern psychedelic culture who believe in old school 20 style Eugenics um like very few do you know Know believe that there should be a kind of some kind of political system that rules who can and can’t reproduce I I kind of

I’ve come across it occasionally but very rarely but you do see all kind you know ideas of certain practices will um um speed up your evolution in some ways uh or possibly speed up the evolution of humanity but um you know like uh you get this idea of DNA Activation in s you know you you might come across an Instagram spirituality that through certain practices or certain drugs or rituals you will activate your your DNA and evolve to The Fifth Dimension for example um or through certain processes you can heal your ancestral trauma and and evolve

to be a a super beinging there’s also I mean one one chapter in this kind of draft book I’ve been writing about um looks at UFO culture culture which is a whole story that that intersects with spiritual evolutionary spirituality and with eugenic thinking um this idea that um you know that aliens are controlling some kind of cosmic eugenic program to uh to evolve Superior beings and that some humans are actually not really humans they’re star seeds they’re a different species they’re part of this Cosmic eugenic program uh whilst other humans are are are kind of inferior on fit they’re like a lower species so um what you saw in UFO culture in the 1950s onwards was some of these ideas of spiritual Eugenics uh and spiritual Evolution feeding into um into UFO culture uh anyway that’s that’s I

I wrote about I wrote an essay online all about star seeds and how it involves some of these uh you know eugenic and and and racial ideas so that’s another way another area you see some of these ideas play out um as for psychedelic evangelism yes I think sometimes you know with people say for example like um Rick doblin or or Roland Griffith there is this sense that psychedelics will play a critical role in the evolution of humans and

that this is um you know like what HG Wells called uh a race between education and catastrophe like either humans will evolve to a higher level or they’re going to go extinct uh and you know if you saw Roland Griffith’s talk at um at psychedelic science that’s what he he says he says we’re facing these existential threats and so Evolution could be very know sorry psychedelics could be very important in the survival of humanity in the evolution of humanity now because the stakes seen as so high because this is a you know

a race between Extinction or Evolution that can lead to this psychedelic evangelism like if the stakes are so high then you know we this must happen and what that can mean is we must therefore not to talk too much about the risks of psychedelics not talk too much about the harms of psychedelics if a pilot takes mushrooms and then you know 48 hours later ex experiences such extreme derealization that they think they’re in a dream and

try to crash the plane therein as as happened um last week you know that must be dismissed as their psychological instabilities nothing to do with the mushrooms so I’m just I’m I’m writing a piece just now for my newsletter it’s called the cost of Utopia if you have such high utopian expectations for psychedelics then you know certain costs are acceptable in terms of psychedelic harms so I think I think that’s how this kind of um thinking can can lead into a kind of evangelism and and utopianism

thank you Jules um

Are there any last questions or comments from the room

yes is evolutionary spirituality not a sort of nonse I mean we all kind of fail to spiritually evolve humans throughout lifetime Lifetime and then spiritual terms are born again and have to learn new lessons what I’m getting is we refer to sort of 5,000 10,000 year old texts for our spirituality it does it evolve can it evolve at all well I mean I yeah that’s a perfectly legitimate question that you know do first of all do humans morally Advance does the spe species morally Advanced is is that even kind of possible uh and you won’t have the answer me no but I mean on certain days I think not and on other days I think maybe so is it show how Bogus the whole thing is

well there have been people who’ said that there there have been biologists um who’ve criticized you know EV evolutionary moral theories starting from Thomas hug Le Thomas Huxley wrote a great essay called Evolution and ethics uh in about 1880 and he said look evolution is not a moral Pro uh process um if you’re in a really vicious environment then the fittest specimen is going to be the most vicious um

so you know he he warned about trying to kind of um harness our ethics or our religion onto evolutionary theory he said you know don’t do it it’s dangerous particularly because it can often lead to um you know this kind of eugenic thinking um so so yeah but but but but I think you could possibly make a kind of Defense of some forms of evolutionary spirituality like possibly you know you could argue that we that that some kind of moral progress is evident in in in human history that we we do you know and people like um Stephen Pinker have argued that and and HL so on my more positive and optimistic days I think maybe maybe we are evolving both technologically and

morally and maybe this you know this is a species-wide thing and maybe we do have a glorious Destiny ahead of us to kind of explore uh through space so I I I it depends on my mood really uh which which attitude I I kind of feel on any given day thanks s see you on the ark and a last question so I’m wondering if we do see evolutionary spirituality or are linking it back to Steve’s original question of the the link to Eco inflation as a way a useful way for people to cope with the dissolution of their previous sense of self and if they have seen they feel transformed they can use that as a CR to make sure that they don’t go back to a previous way of looking at the world so evolutionary spirituality seems to provide a broader framework to fit that new identity so since they’ve evolve they can’t go back do you see a potential there for this to to be healthy or if people are feeling subjectively more mentally healthy is there a way to then support or encourage a way of that framing to be linked to Nature a purpose that is interconnected with a wider hole rather than that they are specifically more evolved than others um

yes I think it is possible um and the example I would give is in our research as we saw um quite a few people talk about having kind of difficulties after trips having extended psychospiritual crisis wondering what’s going on um being given strictly kind of biological frames for it like are you’ve just messed up your neural chemistry and that’s that um and and people talk about being helped by finding the frame of spiritual emergency not everyone is but quite a few people in our research say that don’t they um that they came across the work of Stan gr or others and this idea of spiritual emergency was helpful to them in terms of reframing their their crisis as possibly a kind of growth experience uh and if you look at the theory of spiritual emergency

um as defined by the GRS it is somewhat connected to evolutionary spirituality so the GRS Define spiritual emergency as a kind of temporary turbulent stage in the individual’s um Evolution to a higher state um now I think there are problems you know which we don’t have time to go into but with with gr’s theory of spiritual emergency and one problem very briefly is that I think the GRS tried to kind of separate ordinary bog standard um you know psychological problems and psychosis from these special cases spiritual emergency which happens to kind of special people at places like esselin uh rather than seeing this as a Continuum actually and that you know an awful lot of psycho psychotic experiences have spiritual aspect to them so that’s one issue it’s the attempt to kind of bracket off spiritual emergencies from other kinds of um psychological crisis the second issue is that

gr sees this as a species-wide evolutionary process so in certain organizations like the spiritual crisis Network there’s a teleology here which is that more and more spiritual emergencies are happening because humans are waking up we are waking up to a higher level of Consciousness um to which I I I say kind of well maybe but maybe not who knows for sure like you know that’s that teleology isn’t really necessary like let’s just support people through these crises without having to try and you know hoist them onto some some Grand Cosmic teleological vision of humanity waking up which which actually could you know I’m not sure that’s necessarily helpful to people so you know just brief ly yes AR I think that we’ve definitely seen in our research that the frame of spiritual emergency is often helpful to people in

psychological psychospiritual crisis however I can I can see some kind of problematic issues with some kind of ways that you one could interpret spiritual emergency does that make sense a bit of a a brief answer to course I think it is about moving away more from comparative views of the more evolved than you to seeing how can if we do find pooping that is useful through framings of evolution of I’ve gone through that challenge and I’m now a step further that is not a matter of comparison but more pluralist framings as you mentioned James might be more worth tapping into the future thank you so much Su I realize we are quite over the time but I think everyone really appreciated this talk”

See Also

todo, not sure related pages: that’s why I created this page, b/c Jules makes good points to beware of, not covered by me previously.

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Author: egodeaththeory

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